


Is it Possible to Love you More?

by wellthizizdeprezzing



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Drama, F/F, Happy Ending, Idiots in Love, Pining, Poetry, Romance, Some angst, Writer Character, but refuse to say they are, mentions of smoking and drugs, model character, some Edward and Bella
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:34:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27386512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellthizizdeprezzing/pseuds/wellthizizdeprezzing
Summary: Rosalie and Bella are just friends with benefits. Until one of them wants something more.Originally published in 2018. Cross posting it here.
Relationships: Rosalie Hale/Bella Swan
Comments: 49
Kudos: 155





	1. The Same

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I published this elsewhere about 2 years ago and decided to post it up here to help add to the amount of Rosella stories. I might do that with my other older Rosella fics but I'm not sure yet.  
> The POV's are made vague in order to let the reader decide who is which character, although it probably won't be hard to guess who is who.

It's always the same.

She'll come back from her long absences, smelling of sand, or sea, or ice, or of whatever damn exotic place she has gone to for her photo shoots. Her skin might be bronzed to perfection, or it might be her usual pale golden honey shades. And her hair might be cropped short as if someone angrily snatched up a handful of it and cut it off, or it might be done up in ringlets that curled down her neck gracefully like paint strokes on a canvas. She might even be wearing some new fashion style she has fallen in love with.

But she'll always be here for the same reasons.

She'll invite me to her place, a lavish mansion ridiculously too big for only she lives inside it's abandoned halls, and for a handful of days throughout the year. There she'll treat me to some high class imported wine and food, and give me the souvenir she has bought for me. And I'll oh, and ah at it, and actually appreciate it, not just saying my thanks to avoid looking ungrateful. And from then conversation will start. She'll tell me about her work. She'll show me the pictures of her latest magazine spread. Show me the pictures of her traveling the country sides in her free time. Show me the videos of her walking the runway. Show me the adventures she's had, painting the tales with her vivid words and sparkling recollections. She'll tell me about her latest conquests in bed and I'll try not to grimace and feel sick at her words, and at the beautiful men and women who had spent intimate moments with her.

She'll eventually segue into asking me about what I've been up to and I'll tell her. I'll tell her about my latest book sales, about local conventions, about some friend drama from our old friend group. About the cat I've adopted, about the next art classes I'm taking, about my ex trying to get back into my life. I love the way she pays attention to my words then, like I'm the only person in the world. And honestly I sometimes wish it was like that. Because then I know she could be mine and no one elses. But I don't dare to make such a selfish wish. I don't want to demand more of her than I already have, than she wants to give. Those who have tried to tame her, to claim her as theirs, are shot down and completely cut off. I don't want to lose what little she'll give me so I stay quiet and pretend like this arrangement we have isn't slowly eating me alive.

Conversation slows down to a trickle. I glance at the clock. It's nine pm now. It's always nine pm when it truly starts: the reason for her inviting me over. She'll set her glass down in the exact same manner and her eyes will grow darker and I've already memorized her words, saying them to myself in the dark of my bed when she's gone as I imagine she's here and that it's her fingers touching me and not mine.

"Come upstairs with me."

And her words flip the arousal switch in me and I'm already wet and wanting as I slowly go after her. She takes her time going up the stairs, long fingers caressing the banister, hinting at what is to come. As if she needs to seduce me. She doesn't. I'm already hers and only hers but she doesn't know. She unlocks the bedroom door and a sweet floral scent comes out. Out of all the rooms in her vastly unused mansion, it's the bedroom and the bathroom of which she takes the most care in upkeeping. Because that's where she likes to fuck me the most.

I'm quiet as I enter the room with her, shutting the door shut. She's undressing slowly, shirt, pants, and undergarments slipping off in a teasing display. The muscles under her skin flex, long shapely legs are revealed, and her breasts bounce free of their cages, soft and begging to be tasted. I watch her, mouth dry, waiting patiently for her to undress me next. I don't dare break the process she has going on, because she may have brought me a gift to unwrap, but I will be the gift _she's_ unwrapping.

She rips off my clothes impatiently, hands immediately seeking out my breasts and squeezing them as her lips attack my mouth. I moan at her touch, shivering in the cold air of her room. Her lips are everywhere, nipping and sucking at my skin, hands scratching paths down my back. There is a hunger in her eyes and I want to feed her.

She's rough as she pulls me into bed. She's rough as she eats me out. She's rough as she thrusts into me with her fingers, nails biting into my jerking hips to hold me down. Rough as she makes me climax not once, or twice, but thrice.

She doesn't let me touch her.

Not the first night she comes back.

This night is about her, about letting out all her pent up sexual frustrations. I'm the only one she can reveal her true desires in bed too. The only one who won't judge her for it. Won't say no. And that's why I'm her favorite sex toy. I don't mind it, except when I do. But those feelings of longing and wishful thinking to be something more only arrive much later, when she's done spending her time with me and is off fucking other people for the fun of it. She knows she can do it because I won't leave her. And when she comes back wanting to try out some new move or fetish she's acquired, I let her. I let her ruin me, my innocence, with her every touch.

And I love every damn second of it.

When she's done ravaging me for the night, she'll pull the covers over us and pull me into a warm embrace, chest to chest, legs twined together. We never talk much during sex, or after it. We've done this so long that we can just automatically pick up on what the other wants in bed by body language and moans alone.

I drift off first that first night, tired by the way she has forcefully shaped and coaxed and marked my flesh to her liking. Taken ownership of it. And I'll wake up afterwards in the middle of the night, shivering in the cold dark room, the sheets where she was empty. I know where she is next and what she's doing and I'll pad out to the balcony, finding her there in a thin bathrobe, hair glowing silver in the moonlight.

Smoke curls up and from her mouth, and I'll go stand by her, wrapping the sheets from the bed around me tightly to stave off the chill.

And I'll say just like always, "smoking is bad for you. I wish you wouldn't do it."

And her answer will always be, "this is my last one."

Except it never is.

I'll watch her smoke for a while, words bubbling in my mind, forming on my tongue, making my hand twitch with the urge to write.

_I wish you wouldn't smoke_

_the stench of terrible diseases_

_curls and floats up with the white sheets vapor that comes from your mouth_

_do you smoke because of the bright embers at the end?_

_do they make you feel warm?_

_comforted?_

_I could do the same_

_and with far less worse consequences_

I've written so many poems about her that have gone unpublished. Some are scandalous and intimate, others depressive and downright suicidal. And some I can take and reword so that they seem to be about some guy. Those I can sell, those I _need_ to sell. Those are the painful ones, the ones that if I don't get out and share with others, will be my funeral. But the others, the sweet loving ones, I keep locked up and close to my tender heart. I wonder if she notices that the guy in my poems is most often her? They share the same hobbies, the same talents, and I fear one day if I keep writing, unconsciously my feelings will become too obvious, bleed out on paper, and she will leave me.

She finishes smoking and flicks the stub to the ground below. I think there must be a cementary for cigarettes down in those bushes. A fitting comparison. Each cigarette she smokes is like a lover she uses and then tosses away to rot in apathy. I wonder which cigarette will be me; how many more packs till I reach the end of my usefulness?

This time when we crawl into bed it is only to sleep. I don't bother to leave her house when it is the next day. It's the weekend and since we both know I have nothing better to do because I always clear my schedule for her, and that she has time off from work, we can fuck all we want. This time it's my turn to do what I will with her.

I'm gentle and caring, tongue and lips soft and slow, savoring every last drop and gasp that spills from her. Where she used her tongue to ravish me unabashedly, I use mine bashfully. I check every crevice thoroughly and with a thoughtfulness. Her climaxes aren't violently jerked out of her, but meticulously pieced together, like a puzzle. And when she sees the full painting only then does she cum, hard enough to shatter it. And then I have to rebuild it again.

Maybe next time I'll tune her like a song; make her voice reach a glorious crescendo, a cacophony of pleasure. Or maybe I'll make her a jumble and collection of words she can't pronounce, clawing desperately at my back like she can somehow write them into my skin.

I always make sure to take my time with her, to treat her body like the art it is.

She calls me a huge tease. I call her a philistine.

The second night is mine.

She is the first one to drift off this time, in our warm embrace under the covers, turned docile and weak kneed at my ministrations. When she is asleep only then do I feel brave enough to trace my poems about her into her skin with gentle fingertips. I swoop fast for commas, and linger over a spot for periods. She doesn't stir at my sweet unspoken sentiments. They don't get through to her.

I don't think they ever will.

And when the morning breaks after our second night together, we say our goodbyes and go on back to our normal lives.

I go to write my books and she goes to walk her catwalks.

We pretend those nights never exist. That those touches never happened. That we're just friends. We never speak about it because to do so means its something more than just sex. Neither of us wants that complication; wants to ruin the balance of this relationship. Except I do. I just don't have the courage to do it.

And so I wait again for her to come back from her long trips so we can be weekend lovers before we become friends once more. And I wait again. And again.

The cycle continues.

It's always the same.


	2. Sometimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'm going to try and update this every other day, or every third day so I can get the chapters out faster :)

Sometimes, it's not just a weekend.

Sometimes she stays longer between jobs. Being a super model has its demands and she rarely has a moment of respite. Which is why I'm so grateful that the first thing she does when she gets here is come to me. It means I'm worth something to her in this shit hole town of Forks, Washington, that we both grew up in.

Since this time her break is a little longer, our old friends invite her out for drinks. Their always excited to see her, to get to talk to their one super model friend. It's sort of sad the way they try to lap at her fame, hoping one day she'll invite them to those expensive and fancy places she goes to, hoping she'll introduce them to someone famous. She doesn't ever do it. She does not give out handouts. And if she won't give me some of that treatment and I've known her for years and years, then she won't do it for some people she's only known for six.

She doesn't even humor them. I know they call her a bitch behind her back. She knows it too. That's why she finds it so funny to turn them down and be the bitch they so claimed her to be.

Me, they don't really care about me too much. I may be a famous poet but what is poetry to a sexy body clad in only a scanty Victoria's secret outfit. Poets were dry and boring and didn't have interesting adventures. That's why they only invited me when she could come along. I was the only one who could get her to come to the sad bars and clubs here.

"I don't know why you bother with them, if they only invite you out because of me. Their not your real friends."

I knew that. But who else did I have in this small town? She was the closest thing I had but she was also the farthest, and the others helped with my loneliness when I was missing her. Just because I was a writer did not mean I was anti-social. I enjoyed parties and loud settings, my friends just decided for me that I didn't. So I was never invited to such events.

"Then why do you bother to come when I ask you to, if you know their being fake?" I counter with. We have the same debate every time. And every time she smiles at the end wordlessly and leaves me wanting to know what's behind that look. I am afraid to ask because I might not like it.

The gathering goes as expected. Small talk, pleas for her to introduce them to someone new, begging to hear stories of her latest adventures. I sit there and listen in like a good student, already knowing her stories and so much more because she actually tells me all the little details. Like how she helped save a baby turtle on the beach, how she got brain freeze at the Italian gelato place, how she stubbed her toe running through the woods with her friend.

They laugh at her skim milk version of her adventures, and I sit and drink and try not to glower at the way Mike has slung his arm around the back of her chair. All the guys have crowded her, trying to impress her like they usually do, and it pisses me off. I want to go up and kiss her and tell them she's mine so they'll back off. But no one knows we sleep together. Even the two of us pretend we don't sleep together. So I sit there and stew.

I can see she's getting bored with all the talking as the night wears on, and sends me messages with her eyes. I sigh and get up first, knowing what it is she wants. She wants to escape to the bathroom to avoid Tyler's question of if she has time to go on an outing with him. He's outright flirting with her and not to be outdone Mike joins in. Eric is too timid to be this forward about it and he stays silent. Edward isn't comfortable doing it with me here, given our past, and gets up to go dance with Angela, Jessica and Alice, who are up with Jasper and Emmett.

I don't know where Tyler and Mike get their balls from, but they clearly had cropped up at the wrong time. She would never in a million years think of dating them, or even giving them so much as a kiss on the cheek.

"Excuse me," I get up from my seat and grab her hand. "It's bathroom time."

I can hear Tyler complain, "man, why do girls always have to go to the bathroom together?" at my interruption. I don't care.

I tug her into the bathroom with me. It's a one person one with a single sink and stall. I lock the door behind us.

"God, their so annoying. I think I'd have to drink myself to death to stand another moment listening to their horrible pick up lines. You'd think they'd learn by now that I'm not interested in them. Honestly, did their brains shrink? Do they not see what kind of guys I date?"

I did. And I hated each and every one of them for their perfect teeth and muscles. For being able to be what I couldn't be to her.

Her relationships never lasted long. A month or two, maybe. But to me they were eternity. A eternity that separated me from her and kept my bed cold for days to come.

She was fixing her hair in the mirror. I watched her silently, leaning on the wall before I spoke. "It's because you look so perfect, and have the perfect life, that they wanna be in it." I don't mention this is what I think sometimes.

"Really?" she pauses in the middle of brushing out her bangs. She always looks so put together whenever she goes out.

"Really." My voice feels bigger than I do, echoing off of the tiled walls and right into her ears.

Her face turns sultry. "You sure you not saying that because you want me to fuck you?" Her words bring those desires forth. I hadn't wanted it before but if she so much as said the word, my body was ready and begging for it. It was greedy, trying to fill up with as much of her attentions so it could get through her long departures.

It was incredible how she still had this effect on me, after all this time. "You're going to be missing out spending time with your friends."

Words can be used as both compliments and insults. I use the latter on the word friends.

She takes a cocky step towards me. The space in here is too small. She leans forward. "And so are you," she purrs and then in a more commanding tone, "get on the sink."

I do it without a second's hesitation. She pushes up my mini skirt with even less. The porcelain is cold but her mouth is hot. My hands fist in her hair. Today her tongue is relentless but less unforgiving than the first day she comes back. She parts my folds with hungry expertise, her nose nudging my clit, tongue reaching in, stroking my passions higher. I throw a leg around her shoulders so she can get in better and shove a hand over my mouth to stifle my cries.

Her nails leave crescent moon marks on my pale thighs, parenthesis to hide what I really want to say to her. Instead I rock my hips back and forth and repeat my mantra in my head. _I love you I love you I love you._

Sometimes when she stays longer it ends up like this, fucking around in other places and other times past the weekend. She's the only one who can initiate these things. I am the only one who has to wait.

She growls into my opening, increasing the fervor of her wicked tongue, but it feels a lot more like she is reaching the opening of my heart, stroking it alive with each lick. I'm so full of her and I can barely stand to be empty again. I want to stay in this moment forever but my body cannot comply to my minds demands before I fall apart.

I'm like a vase that's been cracking ever since I've met her and she's the glue that's held me together, that has kept the inside of me filled and useful. A container for flowers. But each year I get more and more broken. And each year there are less and less flowers in me.

She cleans me off with her mouth and then helps me slide on my panties. My legs wobble and my chest is still heaving with exertion. She kisses me, and I can taste my own sad longing on her lips.

"Let's ditch our friends and continue this at my place," she suggests and I don't tell her no, because it means I can spend a little more time avoiding being empty. Can spend a little more time letting her try to fix me. But I know that one day her glue won't be enough to fill all the cracks she's caused me, that the flowers will no longer be able to hide my ruining state.

Some day I will break.

And she won't be enough to fix me anymore.


	3. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So maybe, just maybe, it's not as one sided as it seems...?

"Let's go get ice cream," she says and I _know_. This isn't a simple invite out.

"You're leaving again."

She nods her head, no apology to be seen in her eyes. She never tells me when she leaves. Only when she arrives, so that I can be ready to warm her bed.

But she must feel bad about going because she always takes me places.

Always.

It's the one time she spoils me. If it's not out for food, or for drink, than it's shopping.

I was flattered at first, thinking she didn't want me to miss her so she'd quietly leave. But now I'd much rather have her words, know when she is going so I can steel myself for the wait, watching the news and praying she doesn't find another man while she is gone, a man that would make her settle down. Her long absences were only made worse when she has a companion and I don't. Then the words I would write with my pen on paper turned into cuts made by a knife on skin.

I sigh. I feel heavy already. I can feel the distance and miles between us stretching even if she is still here, holding my naked flesh against hers. "Fine," I say, because I know it is what she wants to hear.

We get dressed and she's chatting to me about her new job and I can barely muster much attention. I used to try, but now I want her to know my displeasure at her leaving. I don't want her leaving on a good note with me.

When did it all get this way? Sometimes I let my memories surface. Try to pick and dissect them apart. Things had seemed so simple before, just two teens confused about their bodies and wanting to explore the adult world of pleasure.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks, noticing I am quiet. More than I usually am. She lifts the spoon full of ice cream into her mouth. Opens wide. Swallows. Her throat bobs with the food. It reminds me of _that_ day. The day her throat bobbed as she tried to swallow down the words she had uttered out in haste, but it was too late.

"I was thinking about us. As teens."

She lets her mind wander back. Focusing on different memories from mine. I have to redirect her. "Our first time together."

She smiles at this, eyes distant as she recalls that day. "We were both so nervous and clumsy as fuck. It was a wonder we managed to get each other off." Our first day making love. I thought it had been love at least on her part. She'd probably thought it was a good fuck on my part.

We'd been roommates at an all girl's boarding school. Hormones were raging. There was no outlet and no way of learning about anything, about how to deal with this sudden change thrust upon our bodies. So often girls turned to one another. And we had done the same.

Our go to girl was Lauren. She knew so much about what girls and boys could do together and we would listen to her in a thrall as she span erotic tales, heroic and harrowing love stories, or gave us advice on how to deal with being horny. She had a way with words that could leave us swooning or panting and writhing in excitement. Because of her I wanted to become a writer, someone who could move people to feel strongly with words like she did. She was someone we looked up. Respected even. From her we learned; she was a better teacher than the actual teachers I had in all my years of high school.

Our initial touches had been clumsy and innocent and regarded with more curiosity than eroticism. First we'd touched each others breasts, loving the softness of round flesh, watching in amazement as the nipples grew hard, and the gasps they could elicit from us when touched just right. Next came the heavy petting. We kept our panties on for that part, neither having the courage to touch the actual thing even as our excitement stained our underwear with proof that we were ready to go farther.

"Lauren said she's masturbated before. Maybe it would be easier if we did the same to ourselves before attempting to touch each other?" She'd suggested one day as she sat in front of each other, legs spread and plaid skirts pushed up high. "We might be less scared to touch afterwards."

"Do it to ourselves, but in front of each other?" I wasn't too keen on the idea. I was still scared to touch my own self. It seemed like something personal, and reserved for the dark of a lonely room.

"She said it feels nice."

I shook my head. "I'm not ready for that yet. Maybe later."

"Okay." She'd looked downcast but I didn't pay too much mind to it because her fingers were already rubbing over the lace of my panties, continuing what Lauren had told us about heavy petting being one of the major steps in adult world.

It hadn't been her last suggestion. "Let's do scissoring." She'd laid me out on the covers on another day, pushing up my skirt. She'd come into my room while I was reading a book and demanded this of me. Her eyes were glowing and there was a redness to her cheeks which meant she had just spoken to Lauren.

"What's that?" I had never heard the term before.

"It's when two girls rub their pussies against each other. It's the next step. And we don't have to take our underwear off for it if you don't want to."

I thought it over for a moment or two and then decided why not. She seemed so excited and I was curious to try something new. "Okay."

She positioned us correctly, explaining to me briefly what the act entailed. "Now we just rock into each other," she pressed up against me and I let out a gasp. I could feel how wet she was by her underwear. I had felt her wet before, but only with my fingers. Here in my most intimate place it was different. Intense.

"You got really excited at Lauren talking," I said, trying to keep my voice even.

She bit her lip bashfully. "You know how she is. How she talks." Her panties gently grazed mine, testing the waters.

Back in those days we talked a lot during sex and before it and after, because we had no clue what we were doing. So we had to verbalize it. Our bodies were on differing wavelengths.

The bed began to creak as we rocked back and forth. It was slow at first, both of us trying to find a common rhythm. I slanted my hips to meet with hers when she canted them down, ensuring the most friction between us. And when we found one, she loved it. Her hips began to press more harshly into mine, eyes rolling closed, hands next to my head fisting the sheets. Wet slicking noises filled the air around us.

I didn't really find scissoring all that titillating, but watching her getting so turned on by it was making me wet as well. Especially the way she was riding me, panting heavily and breasts bouncing around. Her hard nipples strained through her white shirt. I wanted to free them. To make her feel better. I unbuttoned her shirt and freed them from her cups. I pinched her hard nubs between my fingers, kneading the flesh around it.

"Oh-h f-fuck," she stuttered and I had never heard her stutter before. She was always polished sentences and big words.

"Are you okay?" I asked in a raspy voice, wanting her to fall apart more.

"I-I'm going to-" she didn't finish as she froze up, a long low moan leaving her body. Incredible wetness trickled down my crotch. It wasn't mine. Her hips twitched once, twice, and then she collapsed on top of me, breathing heavily and smelling of sex.

I wrapped my arms around her to soothe her, not quite sure of what I had witnessed.

"I came." She told me after several moments pause, voice full of pride and wonder and still a bit breathless.

That was the first time she came because of me. It wouldn't be the last.

"I want to come again," was the demand several weeks after that finally lead to us having sex for the first time.

It was a messy affair of gasped breaths, half muttered words, and twisting and turning and wet dripping down thighs. We were taking turns fingering each other. I had gotten more comfortable with the idea of someone entering me, and I wanted her to be the first one to do so. Not like I had many options at this point in my life, trapped in a world of women behind gated fences and trailing ivy walls. I'd sat on her lap as her fingers teased my entrance impatiently, stirring through the wet there. "Are you ready?" she had asked, voice a bit breathless. I nodded my head yes, impatient as well.

When she slowly slide one finger in I let a muffled groan leave my throat as my neck rested on her shoulder. A second finger found it's way in soon after and before I knew it I was rocking back and forth on her lap, trying to ride the shit out of her fingers. She was merciless in her thrusts, aggressive and frenzied by seeing my face in a most vulnerable of expressions. It wasn't long before I came for the first time. I will never forget the memory. It felt like I was weightless and I was scared and elated at the same time at this heady experience; it was like losing grip of reality. Of time and space, for a little moment.

I was brought back to earth by her kisses on my throat. We never used our mouths on each other, but I was still buzzing happily and didn't pay it too much mind. I got off her lap, and pushed her down, intending to take my time with her. Even back then I was slow and detailed, more interested in learning how to heighten her arousal to an almost maddening point, whereas she loved to rip my climaxes out of me, until I almost choked on my own cries of pleasure, nearly lost myself in the journey to the soaring altitudes she sent me to, before she violently brought me back down to earth.

She shivered under me as I trailed fingers down her thighs, slid her panties down her ankles and traced her opening with my fingers. She writhed under me as I began to pump in and out of her methodically, trying to figure out the best spots for her. She could barely contain herself, legs wrapped around my waist to hold me close, hands tangling in my hair, back arching off the floor as her climax finally hit her. A rush of words and moans came out her mouth but she grabbed my face and pulled me close and did the one thing neither of us had been expecting.

She kissed me, long and hard, bruising. A kiss that was an accumulation of bottled up and restrained previous kisses; unspent currency of affection. "I love you," was mumbled between closed lips and those words made my heart thud but not for the right reasons. I was merely a teen fooling around. I wasn't looking for love. And I hadn't expected it from her of all places. She had to know what we had wasn't real; just a way to satisfy ourselves until we got real boyfriends.

When she realized what she had done and said, her eyes opened wide and her mouth flapped open and close and she swallowed, the pale neck of hers suddenly wet as tears splattered it silently. "It-it just came out," she whispered, begging me to understand. "I didn't mean it."

"Okay," I sighed, not wanting her to freak out anymore. "I get it." And I pulled her close and patted her hair as her tears dried up and her shaking stopped. But we were both scared for different reasons.

My thoughts returned to the present to see she had already finished her ice cream and mine was a melting puddle of goo.

I hadn't meant sex by our first time together. That had been special in it's own right. But what I meant was our first kiss that night. We had never kissed each other before. There was some unspoken rule about it. As long as we kissed the things that we did to each other didn't count. Kissing was done by people who cared. In Lauren's stories love always started with a kiss.

And maybe that's when she infected me. Maybe it was that kiss and muttered phrase that changed me; that made me evolve from a neutral participant to someone in love.

"I don't know why you hold such sentiments for that night. I much preferred our time in college." Of course for her it was all about the sex. In college was when she had taken my virginity.

College was a new experience for both of us, even if the school we went to was right on our doorstep. At this point we were pretty confident with each others bodies, knew what the other liked in between the sheets. And we took our expertise to bed with others. We could finally get the boyfriends we wanted. This was what all four years of high school would pay off for. I was the first one to catch the eye of a boy. Edward was his name. He was from Forks and had gone to school there, and was entitled to the position of _that hot popular guy_ in school. Now he was just hot, as there was no time for superficiality on campus.

I hadn't slept with him for he was keen to take things the old fashioned way. With courting and sweet words and flowers and dates where we held hands and exchanged slow kisses. He cared for me deeply and I began to garner feelings for him. I gradually began to spend more time with him than her, even if the two of us were in fact roommates.

Edward listened and supported my works- I was taking English classes so I could become the writer I always dreamed of being. My first poems were about him, and I had been so proud of them. He had been too, so much so in fact, that he made them into songs. He was a musician, all nimble fingers and soothing chords and harmonies that would rise from his mouth.

She didn't seem to like him, didn't like how I was forgoing spending time with her for him. And each time I told her, "I thought the whole point was to get a boyfriend in college. I would never begrudge you one," she would thin her lips and clamp her jaw and look away. I knew there was more to what she wasn't saying, but I was too afraid to ask to hear it.

By the time Edward finally asked me out, mine and her relationship had become a bit strained. She made sure to keep out of the room whenever he would come over, instead throwing herself into her fashion design and theater double major. And things got even more strained when I told her we would have to stop sleeping together because if we did, it would be like cheating on Edward.

This was a big step for both of us. We had never taken a break from each other. And I was scared as I asked her this. And she looked scared at my proposition. Scared to answer. Unspoken words filled the tension between us before she finally spoke, but not the words she wanted to with. "Okay. That's fine. But at least let's sleep together one last time."

"Okay."

We slept for the last time together the night before Edward and mine's first date. She had brought a strap on for the occasion. We'd never done that before. When she saw my wary look she hurried to reassure me. "You're a virgin. You won't know what to do in bed with a guy."

"But I've done plenty with you," I told her, looking up at her from my flat position on bed.

"It's not the same." And there was no more time for discussion. She took me roughly as she always did and the initial pain at first became pleasure that only mounted and mounted higher. Her movements were fluid and practiced and I wondered if she had done this before, or if she had only learned it for me.

She kissed me again that night. But this time her kisses were tinged with desperation and the taste of salt. I pretended I didn't notice either. It was almost like she was saying goodbye to me for the last time, like we wouldn't see each other. But that was absurd. Why wouldn't we?

If that kiss had first started the infection, than this kiss brought it to the surface. I suddenly began to long for her, to think about her in the mornings and nights and every hour in between. I wanted her because I couldn't have her. I had a boyfriend who loved and cherished me and I cherished him too. I couldn't just drop him for her. For she had built up walls around herself. She had made herself unapproachable to me. Apparently I had hurt her badly, but I couldn't understand how.

Sophomore year we were no longer roommates. We had different friend groups, different schedules, and she had a boyfriend too. She hadn't completely cut me off but she was on the track to. We hung out between classes, got lunch, went on shopping trips with us and our boyfriends. It was easy to not let this small change bother me for a while but then the distance between us began to grow and to irritate me. We saw each other less frequently and my constant attempts to go on double dates with her were turned down; she cited that she had too much work and needed to concentrate on it for it was hard being a double major.

Junior year was when I first started writing poems about her, trying to understand my own tangled emotions for her; about why this chasm opening in our friendship was hurting me so.

It wasn't until graduation that I realized what was wrong with me. Why I was unsettled by the empty space she had put between us.

We sat there, in a room of hundreds, sweating under our black caps and gowns in the midday heat. I had already gotten my diploma and she had just gone onto stage to receive hers. I cheered loudly for her, Edward clapping loudly for her as well. And it all hit me at once. This was it. We were going to go our separate ways. She was already contracted to a modeling agency and I was going to stay here to work some odd jobs until I got my first book published.

I didn't want us to separate. On campus, we had been at different ends. But it hadn't felt real. Because there was always the hope we could cross paths unintentionally as we were on our way to class or lunch. Always the hope we would end up in a similar class or club. But once we graduated...it was real. There was nothing to hold our disintegrating relationship together. No campus to trap us, force our paths together. No events to see each other at.

I immediately broke down in tears, feeling an intense sense of loss inside me. There was so much more I had wanted from our friendship. So much more I had wanted to tell her, to do with her. And it was all too late. She was special to me, I realized that now. Special to me unlike the other friends in my life. I would miss them, and I would also miss Edward, but their absence wouldn't leave an aching hole in my heart.

Edward thought these were happy tears, so he let me shed them. I didn't stop crying even when the ceremony was over. She saw my face and immediately knew what was wrong. Her beaming smile at her diploma fell and she took me off to the side and we hugged each other, clinging a bit too desperately for it to be normal.

"You're leaving," I blubbered.

"I know."

"I don't want you to."

"I know." A soft sigh exited her mouth. "But I have to."

Any last hopes I had that she might reconsider leaving me were dashed. I had forgotten that I had lost my privilege to cling to her like that, to make such demands of her. I had lost that when I had gotten a boyfriend. He was the one I should make such heartwretching demands to.

So I pulled away and looked her in her beautiful bright eyes. "I wish you all the best." And then I left, because there was nothing more I could do.

"Are you okay?" her words bring me once more to the present and I realize I'm crying. I wipe at my face and shake my head yes. "I'm fine. Just...thinking back about things makes me sappy."

Something flashes on her face, but I don't catch it. My ice cream has been entirely ruined now, my tears skiing down the white slopes. "Maybe we should go," I suggest, quickly trying to act normal. Act like my very soul hasn't been shaken by those painful thoughts. Before she can say anything, I leave first. Because there is nothing more I can do.


	4. Eventually

Eventually it happens.

Just like eventually I knew it would.

There's only so much a person can do before the façade breaks and falls.

It starts with my birthday. She's the first one to call me. She always is. No matter where she is, or what she's doing, or what the time zone difference happens to be, she always calls me first as soon as the clock strikes 12.

"Happy birthday!" She'll scream into my ears and I'll wince at the volume but smile at her enthusiasm. "I hope you're having a splendid one." Not only does she call me, she sends me gifts for my birthday too. Like a new set of notebooks, or some pens, or some good books. Because she knows this is what I like. What she doesn't know is what I really want and need is not some flimsy paper, or ink that will stain my hands, or words to teleport myself from this world. While they are welcome distractions from thinking about her, she's the one thing I'd really want as a gift. Her answering love and affection would be enough of a birthday gift to last me through all my other birthdays.

When it's her birthday it's much harder for me to pick what to get her. The girl already has almost anything she could want, and if she doesn't she could easily get it. So I get her more thoughtful gifts- I give her things I've handcrafted. Things that involve love and time and care. Those make her eyes gleam with joy, because she can have any materialistic good she can buy, but she can't get something like this from just anyone. And neither can she get fucked like I fuck her.

On the day of my birthday I'm invited by my friends to a little quaint restaurant and we eat and talk and laugh there. And they bring me a cake with a huge three zero on it and start to sing. The candles flicker in front of my eyes and I plaster a fake smile onto my face. I'm thirty. It hits me like a train. I'm getting old and I have nothing to show for it. No lasting meaningful relations, no real path in life. What have I even done with my life? It feels like I've just been drifting back and forth and letting my whole life revolve around her. I would remember praying for the days to speed up when she wasn't here, months falling away uselessly like dead leaves until those couple of days in between when she would come back. Those too would go by too quickly, even quicker than the waits.

For the past few years of my life, I had focused it on her. And what did I have to show for it? Maybe some good poetry and this cake, signalling how much of my life had been wasted pining after something I could probably never have.

The singing has stopped. I didn't even notice. "Make a wish," Angela tells me and I suck in a deep breath, focusing on a good one. It's one that I make with some desperation, one that hurts me to make but which I know I have to if I ever want to regain my life from the endless monotony it has become. Then I blow out the candles and it's time to cut the cake.

She treats me to mind blowing sex for my birthday. After I'm done celebrating it with Edward and my friends from Forks, she swoops me up into her wings and takes me to her bed. She's spread out candles and rose petals and has all my favorite things ready. She pulls orgasm after orgasm out of me. My body is sore and aching and my voice is hoarse afterwards, but tonight is all about my needs so she doesn't ask me to take care of her own, just excuses herself to the bathroom to handle it there. But while she's gone, I think.

I think and I think. I've been thinking a lot recently and I realized I'm not happy. That I can't do this anymore.

"How much longer are we going to do this?" I ask her after she comes back. My voice shakes like a leaf caught in a violent storm. She is that storm, and she has the power to snatch that leaf away and let my unspoken words fall on deaf ears. She is impenetrable, her winds preventing even the bravest of my words from making it through and to her ears.

"How much longer what?" There is a tinge of irritation in her voice. She is warning me to drop this topic. She knows what I mean. But she wants to pretend she doesn't so I can quickly back out of the mistake I'm going to make and we can go back to pretending things are normal. But maybe I've been so careful not to make a mistake, that I've only hurt myself. Humans learn from mistakes and it was time I made mine with her. I was tired of prancing around this invisible line we had established with ourselves.

I sigh. Suck in a breath. Pray the leaf has the strength to hold onto it's branch. "I'm thirty. Thirty years old."

"I know." She's annoyed. I ignore the warning signs telling me to go back. To stop this.

The next part isn't easier to say.

"And so are you."

"So?" Now she's angry.

"I just..." I sigh, look down at my hands. My naked back is facing hers. I can't see what face she's making which helps me go on.

"I'm single. And I've been single for a while. I can't continue that anymore. I'm getting too old."

Silent tears splatter down on my shaking hands. My voice isn't the only thing like a leaf. My whole body is shaking, feeling paper thin, ready to blow away into a dark abyss with any wrongly chosen word that she says.

"And you're single too. Don't you think it's time we settled down? Stopped playing this charade?"

She's quiet. The bed moves as she gets up. "You think this is a game?" her voice is even. I can't tell what emotion she's feeling now.

"Isn't that what you wanted it to be? Just fun?"

She's quiet again before she speaks.

"Yes."

But it sounds like the opposite is true and I've used up all my courage in talking about this and have no more to pursue this further. So when she goes out on the balcony to smoke I don't follow her this time. I don't tell her to stop smoking.

Something has changed with us. I don't know what yet. It feels oddly freeing and constraining at the same time.

"Happy birthday to me," I murmur in the dark of the room and look up at the white ceiling. I had a sinking suspicion my wish was about to come true. And I was sadly happy.

* * *

Two months pass after that. She had left the night after my birthday without saving anything else. Nothing else was needed to be said between us. She knew what I had been getting at. Or maybe she didn't. Either way I knew she required time to digest what I had hinted at with my unsatisfying sentences that left a lot of blank spaces between us.

We don't talk to each over these long periods of time, unless it's to notify when she is coming back. To talk to each other, for other reasons beside birthday wishes, was a weakness. It meant we cared more than we were letting on. Neither of us were stupid enough to breach the silence, not even as I burned with curiosity at what she was going to decide to do.

In the meantime I throw myself back into my work. I have a deadline to publish my new book by. I had half of it written when I'd decided to scrap it. I was changing the theme of the poetry book from nature to longing, loss, and letting go. It was her fault that I was doing this, but also my own. I had vowed to myself on those little lit candles that I would get my life back, and the first step to doing that was to pour all these unspoken sentiments and words out into the public void.

I knew my publisher would be angry by my sudden change; the book on nature would have been out on time for the summer season and now it wouldn't be. No one really liked reading angsty crap- why should they when life was hard enough? People wanted happy stories, stories of success, of getting desires fulfilled. And this book was all about dissatisfaction, about the darkest corners of my heart and soul, and the woman who had discovered them for me.

I unlock the drawer of my desk and take out the stacks of paper there. Some papers are brittle from age and others are white sheets of freshness. Ink is smudged on some where my tears mixed in with the words. Other ink is scrawled, sharp edges of anger, holes where the pen tip went through. I take my time shifting through them, before I settle on the best and worst ones from the stack. I begin to organize them in a fashion that spins a chronological story.

My first poem is the one reminiscing on meeting her for the first time. I had written this poem back in my freshman year of college when I still didn't know that I felt this deeply for her. Back than, it had been simple wonder when addressing her looks. They had always astonished me, and were often a subject of my writings because it was fun to see in how many ways I could describe her allure.

_First day of class_

_All girl's boarding school_

_The teacher at the head of the room calls for our attention, but I'm bored_

_Angry_

_Antsy_

_I want to leave this room already. I don't want to be here_

_I'm a prisoner by my mother's right_

_who claims I need to be among ladies to be a lady. If only she knew the kind of girls that frequent these halls_

_short skirts, piercings, legs that never close, and mouths stinking of smoke and cruel words._

_Their eyes are hungry, caged, and they would eat anyone alive if it meant leaving this place._

_I don't intend to be their meal, but I am a sheep to their lion's teeth._

_First day and I'm already having my bag grabbed, my hair pulled, and the familiar threat of 'give us your lunch money' hissed into a rubbed raw ear  
_

_But one girl is different. In a good or bad_ _way_ _I don't know yet._

_She sits next to me, all casual disarray yet when she speaks it is with intelligence and poise_

_A princess playing at rebel._

_She even looks like a princess. All soft long locks and royal facial features, her back straight when she walks down the corridors like she owns all of this,_

_owns all of us._

_And she does._

_A princess she may look like but the rebel act isn't fake._

_Her brown eyes are hard and she scowls at the girls annoying me._

_"Stop."_

_One word and it is all that needs to be said._

_I owe her my life, my peace of mind. I want to know why she saved me, when other girls get bullied too._

_Why was I the exception?_

_I focus the rest of the class period on thinking of ways to bring this up to her and when the bell rings I crowd her desk,_

_"Why help me?"_

_She looks up at me, smirks._

_"Because you look like a nerd and I need someone to do my homework for me."_

_Who knew that the princess turned rebel could also be the head bitch in charge._

That was my first official poem about her. And I want to start the book with that as the first one. But I'll need a preface, something that will set the tone for the rest of the book. I pick up my pen and scribble out a rough draft for what I might say.

_Sometimes we meet someone. A special someone that changes our lives in ways we could never imagine, never predict. Most often it starts off with a casual meeting. Maybe the two of you hate each other at first. Maybe it was love at first sight. Or maybe it was something neutral, indescribable. For me, I've met such a person. This person has been in my life for so many years but to them, it's never been the same. All the pain, the happiness, the sadness that I've felt have stemmed from them at some point or another, yet they don't know what they do to me. And I can't ever tell them, because if I do, I lose them forever. And that is a risk I cannot take. So, all I do, and have done for years is silently suffer while they live carefree._

_But the years have sobered me, and the sparkle of keeping the same state of the relationship has disappeared. Even the best things in life sometimes aren't worth it. I'm going to learn to let go. To move on. And I hope that this book resonates with those who are in a similar if not the same position as me. That it helps them get through the tough trying times, that it helps them wake up to realize that they deserve better; I hope that it won't take them years to notice that they shouldn't be in such a toxic relationship. I hope this book helps them through this trying process; helps them onto a road to emotional recovery.  
_

I set the pen down there, letting out a sigh. It will do for now, though I know I want to add more to it. Need to add more to it. This is my moment to let all my grievances go.

I look at another poem, written as well in the past. This was about the time when I had finally fallen into a routine in boarding school. She wanted me to do her homework for her. I said no, she threatened to sic the bullies back on me, I contemplated her bluff before I told her no, and then worked together with her on her homework. Even as a freshman she commanded a good deal of power over girls. Yet knowing this didn't scare me. Because I knew that she'd never really hurt anyone, or me. Not unless she was cornered into doing it, like that one time.

We had still been somewhat antagonistic towards each other at the time, but I had done something to turn that all around unwittingly; she had to rectify my mistake and I tended to her wounds with a tenderness she had never been given before.

_"Do my homework for me."_

_A cigarette dangles lazily from her lips, unlit._

_I do not know where this pesky habit came from, she must have picked up smoking before she came here because she'd been doing it before the other girls could,_

_claiming the second floor bathroom for her smoke breaks._

_She'd entice me with the white fetid sticks of death_

_and I'd decline her offer each time._

_"I won't do your homework for you."_

_I say this every time, yet when she slides out her textbook I will look over on her struggling with her work and offer advice._

_She knows I won't ever do it for her, but it's become custom to ask and for me to say no._

_The sun is out, we're sitting on the benches, enjoying a late lunch just the two of us_

_I don't have friends because she's always by my side and no one wants to piss her off_

_And she doesn't have friends because she doesn't want any, although you could fill a school with how many admirers she has._

_In fact this school is filled with them_

_but with an equal amount of people who hate her._

_These three girls interrupt our lunch._

_By the hard look in their eyes it's not for something pleasant  
_

_and I'm right. She walks away with them. I busy myself with my book, and when she comes back ten minutes later she's red and black and blue_

_I am angry for her sake as I wipe away the red on her lip that isn't lipstick_

_as I soothe the swell of her brown eye now black with my cold water bottle._

_"What happened."_

_"They wanted to hurt you for getting them in trouble with the teacher."_

_"You didn't have to protect me. I can handle myself."_

_"I didn't want your pretty face to get ruined."_

_Who knew the princess turned rebel turned head bitch in charge could also be such an angel.  
_

I sigh and flip forwards to a later one. The one where we're about to find out what undergrad school we're going to get into.

_We're both nervous_

_this is a momentous moment,_

_it determines our future together_

_but she's the one whose shaking like she is overcome with fever_

_and maybe she is feeling sick_

_for I see her wipe her sweaty palms on her shirt_

_watch her grab her head as if it is wracked with pain._

_I clasp a hand onto her shoulder other hand holding both of our letters from Forks one and only college,_

_the one we'd both applied to_

_"Calm down."_

_"I can't be calm. I want us to be together. I_ need _us to be together."_

_"Being nervous won't change anything."_

_She rubs her eyes, her forehead._

_"Uh, fuck. Fuck me."_

_It's a nervous statement but also a serious one._

_I agree without a second thought._

_She thrusts and clings to me like this is the last time we might do this, but I know it won't be._

_Because if we did it wouldn't cause me enough pain to be separate from her now,_

_no, it would take me years to realize that, and only then would fate finally cut the thread between us because that's when it would hurt the most._

_Done with our fucking, she tears open the letters and lets out a soft sob when she sees we've both been accepted._

_I pat her shaking shoulders, confused by the intensity of her emotions._

I'm debating if I should include the ones that are more sordid in nature. I've never had sexual content in my books before. Their mostly for the preteen age range and if I put such content in this book, than I'll lose my usual crowd. I contemplate all of three seconds before I decide that if I'm going to cleanse my soul, it includes _everything_.

_"Because you look like a nerd and I need someone to do my homework for me."_

_She was the smart one, an upper class schooling ingrained into her mind from birth,_

_brain crammed full of useless and useful facts over the years._

_Yet, she asked me for help each time with her work._

_She never struggled with her work in college, successfully completing her double major and minor all on time._

_So why did she need my help in high school?_

_"I didn't want your pretty face to get ruined."_

_She said this, to protect me from something I had brought upon my own head_

_yet she was the pretty one._

_I was average, everyone knew that._

_She was the model, stunning looks that no one could compare with in high school, even with make up on._

_Her's was the face that shouldn't have been beat but it was._

_Her's should have been the one protect but it hadn't been._

_"I can't be calm. I want us to be together. I_ need _us to be together."_

_Why had this been so important? She was the one with all the fans_

_with the face that could get her whatever she wanted_

_with the money to buy new friends just sitting stagnant in her bank account._

_So why had it mattered so much that I had to be there with her?_

_Why do_ I _matter so much?_

I had written this when I was in college, when I was thinking about why our friendship was falling apart. After a couple of beers, my mind had begun to whirl and I had been onto something, finally realizing things she had said, or done, and why they didn't add up. But my epiphany had been cut short when Edward had come to spend the night with me and I'd never gotten back to this poem, just shoved it hastily among my papers. And now I was reading it for a second time scowling to myself.

Yes, what did all this mean indeed?

A ping on my phone interrupts my reading and deep thinking and I see that it's a text from her.

**I'm coming back to Forks. Be ready by five pm on Friday.**

I shove my papers back and look at the clock. It's only ten am on Friday. I have some time to steel my nerves, to draft my thoughts to her, because this time the only fucking that will happen is with the curse words that fall from our mouth.

I get up to go get dressed. Looks like my epiphany will go unrealized once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Didn't mean for this to get so poetry heavy but felt it was important to the way the story was told. 


	5. No More

She stands there in the middle of my living room, arms hanging uselessly from her sides. She looks out of place in the chaos of my house. There are balled up papers on the desks, pens scattered around, food wrappers lying like mines on the carpets. Random clothes decorate the furniture. In her sleek put together outfit, smelling of the beach and tropical drinks, she is too neat for this space.

But she also fits in with the chaos; balled up energy, fears scattered wildly, her bag and purse lying on the couch where she haphazardly dropped them. I can see unrestrained emotions on her face but so many of them are flitting by that I can hardly tell which is which. She looks like she's the one who made the mess in the room and I bet she would if there was anything left to destroy but I already had that covered for her.

"What did you say to me?" Her voice wavers.

"No more." My voice trembles as well. But I jut my chin out bravely and cross my arms over my chest. I don't let my eyes waver from hers. "I said no more."

"What is this about?" She sighs, hope gleaming on her face. She thinks I'm joking.

"I already told you. I'm done with all this. I'm done playing this game with you."

"You're tired of me?!" she hisses, angry in a snap of a finger.

I swallow. "Yes." It hurts me to say this, because it's not all true. But I don't have another option. "I'm tired of dancing around to your requests. I'm thirty. Fucking thirty years old. I'm getting old. I want to raise a family. I want to settle down! I want to have someone that won't stay in my bed for two to three nights and than leave me alone for months on end. I can't keep fucking doing this shit! I want a fucking life like that's put together and you can't fucking give it to me. I want someone that can. So I'm done." It all bursts out of me, years of repent emotions. Still, this isn't even the tip of the iceberg on what I want to tell her.

She swallows. Looks down. Her shoulders twitch. She pushes past me and goes out to my balcony window. I watch from inside as she lights her cigarette cursing when it doesn't light on the first try; that's how much her hands are shaking. I wait until she takes her first two inhales, the smoke exhaling and curling out into the dusk sky. Only then do I join her, noticing her hands stopped shaking.

She won't look at me, gazing out at the pond in my back yard.

And I'll say, like a prerecorded doll, "smoking is bad for you. I wish you wouldn't do it."

This time she offers me something new. "I only smoke when I'm stressed."

This is the first time I've heard this. I know it's not something new- people turn to tobacco for the nicotine that provides them with soothing chemicals. Yet, I only thought she smoked because she liked the image-all the cool people, all the glamorous woman smoked- or because it was just some old habit she couldn't totally drop. I run through my mind every time I've seen her smoke. Even in high school, it's always been after we've had sex. In high school, she'd smoke more heavily, almost three or four after each round. Over the years it's only become one. I'm positive this is the only time I've ever seen her light a cigarette up.

I'm confused now, more than ever by her. Was sex with me really that stressful? Why? It didn't make sense.

I don't know what to say to that, so I tell her, "You know what I wished for for my birthday?"

She doesn't answer, just inhales another puff.

I go on. "I wished to be free." _From you,_ goes unspoken only because I know she knows what I mean.

She flicks some ash off of the cigarette's tip. Takes another drag. I'm expecting a scathing remark. She gives me a neutral one. "You know what they say about telling people your birthday wishes. They won't come true."

A tiny part of me was still trying to corrupt me, to get me to stay with her. I cursed that tiny part, trying to crush it. Now I am the silent one. Time stretches between us.

"Okay," she says and I don't know what she is acquiescing to. She takes another drag, half the cig disappearing with that inhalation before she flings it away from her, as far as she can get it. "This is my last one."

Except this time she means it.

Something in my head clicks and I finally understand another piece of the enigma that is her. Why she smokes from stress.

I used to think the cigarettes were a count for all her ex lovers, but really they were a countdown for _me_. All this time, she had been counting down how many times she would let me go. Each cigarette was meant to be the last.

It was never was.

Until now.

I had finally given her the fuel she needed to give up her nasty addiction. A terrible pain clawed at my heart. She had been hurting like me all this time. Yet, she had never given any indication of it. Why had she been hurting? I was the one who was so God damn in love with her, it hurt! She was out there, free to love whomever she pleased because she wasn't cursed with love affliction.

"Why. Why not tell me a thing?" I asked her, my voice hoarse. She closed her eyes, slumped against the balcony. She looked defeated, old. Cold.

Not like my friend. A stranger, a stranger in my house and bed.

"Because you didn't know. And even when you did, you still didn't." Her words are cryptic. They make my heart clench in hurt. "So it wouldn't have mattered."

"What do you mean-?"

"No more. Please, no more." Her pleas are heart breaking, utilizing my own phrase as a weapon against me, and then she's pushing away, and gone.

Gone.

This time for real.

I feel numb. I don't know if I can or should feel anything right now.

That night I don't sleep but scour my backyard for the cigarette butt she had thrown out. I find it after hours of searching through weeds and flower beds and dirt, and clench it between my fingers, crushing it. Tobacco stains my digits. I want to make sure it's completely destroyed, because I don't intend to leave any loose threads of what we used to have between us. I wouldn't even be friends with her, because all that friendship had done was control my life, until I was living a life she wanted and constructed for me.

No more. It was time for a fresh start, and I know where to get it.

His name flashes in my mind and as I wash away the smell of tobacco from my fingers, the reality of what I've finally done crashes down on me and my knees crash down to the floor as I wrap my arms around myself and sob relentlessly, like my heart has been destroyed along with that cigarette.

And maybe it has.

.

..

...

Who knew that letting go of something you've never had could hurt this much?


	6. Edward

He is my safe space. He always has and always will be, even when things are not the best between us. There is just something about his old fashioned manners and the melodic quality of his voice and touch that eases my soul. I've come to rely on him a lot during the years. We haven't dated since he broke up with me the year after graduation, and while the road may have been tough, while there may have been hurt and unresolved feelings between us, I can always count on him to be here for me. Like now.

Her words and actions had carved out my heart and taken it with her on her latest trip. I don't know when it will return to me, but I dearly want my captive heart back. I want to feel something. I want to be able to live my life. But without my heart, my poems turn into demented scribbles and I barely have the strength to get out of bed.

Edward comes to visit. He knows what is wrong without me even having to say it. I think he has a sneaking suspicion about mine and her relationship, but he won't say anything and I won't confirm anything and so conversations on that topic do not breach much.

He comes to my house and opens the shades, collects and picks up any other messes I may have made of my things. There's broken glass on the floor, shards tinged red with fury. There's crumbled up paper, bleeding blue wet ink. There's clothing strewn about like a rainbow that's been gutted open, its innards lying each way about.

He does everything wordlessly and I watch him from half open eyes. He makes me soup, and when I don't reach for it, he sits me up and feeds me with all the patience of a mother feeding a child. He knows how grateful I am for his presence, even if I say nothing in return.

He's had to deal with this before. So he's an expert. He knows I won't talk about things I do not want to and that I won't listen to his words either. Once he makes sure I am fed, he goes and leaves and I am left alone once more, until he returns the next day. And the day after. It takes me three days this time to get over the hurt she has inflicted me. Usually it's never this bad. Just a day or two of moping around, of slightly catatonic states. It's always her fault I feel this way. Not that I ever let her know. It would be a weakness to admit to her this.

There was only one time that she didn't make me feel this way. In fact, it had been Edward's fault. We had broken up because he thought I didn't love him anymore and he didn't want me to have to force myself to stay when I was unhappy. I had fought and argued against this, saying it was just a slump. That I was merely in the blues about graduation and about finding work and a steady future for us. But he had sniffed through my lies. "No. You simply don't love me. And I can't stand to be around you if you don't."

I had been desperate to avoid this break up. I was already missing a huge chunk of me because of mine and her's separation and here he was taking away the only distraction from my depressed thoughts: himself. I had fallen into despair after he forced me to move out of the shared house we had and into some low grade apartment. I didn't bother to eat or move those few days and it was only when the sun broke on the third day that I got myself together and just in time.

She knocked on my door. To say I was surprised was an understatement. When had she come back?

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you. I heard about what happened."

"Oh."

I hadn't expected her to come back from halfway across the world only to hear this about me. I didn't want her pity.

"I'm sorry," she whispered and then leaned in to capture my lips with hers. It was the first time we had been together in years and it felt so right. It was also the only time she had been soft with me. Her touches were gentle and her kisses warm and reassuring and she worshiped my body like it was a temple. She made me feel worth something.

We started sleeping together after that night. It was how we got to where we are now, seven years later.

Actually, it seems even the one time I thought Edward had hurt me deeply, it had still been about her. Because I didn't have him to make me forget her leaving me and when I was alone, all those thoughts I had been repressing had crushed down on me.

I sigh and close my eyes. She could bring me the highest pleasures but also the worst pains. Guess it was true about what they said about pain and pleasure being mixed together.

I couldn't let her continue doing this to me. I had to stop relying on her to be my future and my present. So I got out of bed and got dressed and went over to Edward's house. He still lives in the same place as always. Nothing about him has changed, except that maybe he has a small scruffy beard now.

He's reliable. Safe. Predictable.

And she is the opposite of all those things.

He opens the door for me and I go in. "I need to talk to you."

He isn't surprised. He motions to a table and brings me over something to drink from the kitchen. It's my favorite- ice tea.

I take a sip. Steady my hands. If only she hadn't taken my heart, it would be beating wildly now. But she has, so all I can feel is numb calm. "Edward, I want to get back together with you."

He still isn't surprised. He takes a sip of his drink. Let's me ruminate in the left over vibrations of my declaration. They circle around us, cocooning us with the weight of my choice. "Okay." I knew he would answer me this way. That was why he would always be my safe space. The only person I could rely on.

He doesn't even ask if I love him, or why I want to do this. Just accepts things as they are.

Good old Edward.


	7. Would it Hurt Less if I Did(n't)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is from the model character's perspective. Hopefully that should give more insight on the history between the two. This one is set a bit back in time.

I often wondered if I made the right choice. Because it felt that I never did when it came to you.

I was scared. Scared of your reaction. When I had let those three words slip free from my throat, the look of horror on your face was enough to temper all my desires. Terror flooded my body. I wasn't supposed to say that. Love was reserved for people who felt the same way about each other. For people who were serious. We weren't either of those. We were just teens messing around because we were bored and horny. Except that was never just the case for me. It was ridiculous how easily I had fallen in love with you. If you asked me how long I had loved you, it would be easier to count the days I hadn't. Just the years predating my fourteenth birthday, because every day, every minute, every second after that, I spent loving you.

And it hurt me when I saw you didn't feel the same for me.

The taste of cigarette's lingered in my mouth to wash out the taste of you after we'd slept together. The smoke that filled my lungs silenced and killed and blackened any I love you's that wanted to escape. You made me a smoker. Before I'd take a puff or two, to cement my image as a tough bitch. But it was only with you that I became in need of the sweet nicotine that would soothe my jumbled up feelings after we'd have our fun.

It's not something I've been proud of. But you made me an addict. First to cigarettes and then to your lips. It was almost comical how much I craved kissing you; I'd fantasize about farfetched situations in which we'd accidentally have to kiss, our lips joining together as you clumsily tripped in front of me and your mouth landing on mine as your hips were caught in my hands. Or situations in which I'd have to kiss you to save your life or something equally outrageous along those lines. As time went by they kept getting more and more ridiculous. More and more desperate. Thinking of kissing you would get me so aroused, more so than the thought of having sex with you, and it was all because it was forbidden to me. And what doesn't taste the sweetest but the fruit you cannot have? I badly wanted a taste of those lips; it was more than just a bodily need despite what you might think if you saw how I dripped down my legs. It was a desire I felt with my soul, with my heart, with my very being; as pitiful as it all sounds, it's true. But I didn't dare satisfy my own aching desire and kiss you, only to lose you. A repeat of that kiss could never once again happen, no matter how it tore me up inside to be refused this one object of my need.

I couldn't slip up like I had before. I didn't want to forgo you, because I thought that any form, any dose of you I could get was better than losing all this we had. I couldn't stand to lose you, so naturally I lost you.

And to such a pansy. I hated Edward. I hated him so much. He monopolized your time, kissed you, touched you like you had forbidden me from doing. But worst of all, I hated the way you looked at him. You looked at him the way you wouldn't look at me. Full of love. Adoration. Need.

I know we said we had only done all those things to get boyfriends but honestly I had wanted to be yours.

So what if I didn't sag my jeans, or have short cropped hair. I would chop all my locks, wear terrible clothing, if only you would look at me. But you never did. You saw in me a friend and I made a tough choice. I would distance myself from you. Perhaps we had outgrown our relationship. It happened even to the closest of friends, and we had never really been just friends to begin with, had we?

Still, I couldn't let go so easily. I found a boyfriend all in hopes that I could use the excuse of us going on double dates with our boyfriends so I could see you. Those dates...I was torn in half by pain and joy. Joy because I could see you. Happy, even if it meant I was suffering. For it was painful to see you dote on Edward, to see you give him what you wouldn't give me.

Eventually the dates became too painful to do either, so I gave up on them, focused on my own boyfriend, on my grades, on my classes. I didn't want to think of you. Didn't want to see you. As if sensing my reluctance to be with you, you pressed more to hang out with me. You wouldn't let me have my peace. I didn't want to turn you down but I had to.

As a sort of goodbye I slept with you one more time. Fucked you hard with a strap on, hoping when you finally slept with Edward, you'd realize he didn't compare to me; that I could utilize a member I didn't have better than the one he did have. And I finally caved into my desire to kiss you. Our relationship was already at an end. What would one more kiss do?

I couldn't stop the tears that flavored my kiss, but I was grateful you didn't comment on them. I think if you did, I would have broken down and confessed all my feelings for you in that moment. You didn't, so you spared me the embarrassment of a rejection.

I thought I was making the right choice by leaving 'us'.

But when I saw you at graduation, breaking down in tears and clinging to me like you were losing a lover, I began to second guess all my attempts at distancing myself from you. I almost wavered in my resolve- I was a stubborn one when the time called for it. But I didn't give in for it was already too late. I was off to travel the world and you were to stay here with Edward.

I no longer had a boyfriend to tie me down, for he had taken to breaking up with me when I called out your name once too many times in bed for it to be normal. And I didn't have the right to ask you to hold me back, for I had lost the privilege when I had turned my back on our friendship even as you tried to revive it back from the dead with friendly text messages and concerned calls and by showing up and supporting my fashion shows.

So I bid you goodbye and tried to ignore the devastation on your face. Instead, I thought of happy memories. Of all the funny hi-jinks we got up to high school, of all the time we spent intertwined together in sweaty and sleepy limbs, of all the times we would simply just _be_ around each other. I was always content just to be around you. But I guess it was never enough for you.

I stayed away from Forks for one whole year before I had to come back. I'd just heard you broke up with Edward and I knew you could use a friend to talk to. But mainly I was being selfish. I knew you would be broken by your loss of relationship with him and that you would be weak and vulnerable and that with him out of the picture, we could go back to how things were between us.

I hated myself for taking advantage of you like that, for being vile and using your broken heart to heal my own. Even as I worshiped you from head to toe, made you reach the highest highs, I hated myself. Hated myself with every gasped breath and moan of my name. Still, I didn't make the choice to stop and if anything I only made it worse. I kept you on a chain and leash. Now that I had you, now that I could see how eager and happy you were when I was around, I wasn't ever going to let you go.

So I poisoned you. Delivered the venom with my lips on yours, tongue wicked and searching to pierce your heart. Broke your body so it could only respond to mine. Corrupted your mind so you would only think of me. I wanted you to love me.

I could never tell if you did.

Leaving you after our nights together was never easy. I would always wonder if you would go back to Edward, if you would cheat on me with some other boy. Work wasn't a good enough distraction to keep me from fretting over that. What if you found someone new to love? What if you let me go again?

I sought comfort and forgetting in the arms of many high class lovers, all who were the opposite of what you looked like. I couldn't stand to make love to a person who looked like you but wasn't. I wanted the real thing, and if I couldn't have it, than it would be something as far as possible from you. But those relationships never lasted long. I only used them for sex, to numb the hurt and longing in my body and soul. And once I was bored with them, once they could no longer help me ignore the pain, I would move on and on, until I was moving on back to you, body aching tremendously with a need for you.

And you didn't know it. You would sit there as we talked before we went upstairs, and you would be all doe eyed and smiling and wouldn't know how much I had to restrain myself to give you some moments of civility before I tore your clothes off. If I had my choice, you wouldn't be wearing clothes as soon as you walked in through my door. But I didn't want to frighten you with the strength of my irrepressible urges.

Sometimes I was worried I was too rough with you in bed but I couldn't help it. I wanted to claim every inch of your flesh as mine, wanted to erase thoughts of anyone else from your mind, wanted you to melt right into me, wanted to fill the hole where the heart you had taken was. You kept my heart locked up with you. I don't know where it is, and I sort of don't wish to find it.

My lips are branding irons, my touch is hot coals and I feel like I am consumed by flames every time we touch. Yet I want this fire; I want to burn alive.

When you touch me, it's always soft and gentle. If I am scorching and burning, you are the aloe, cool and soothing, that tempers the wound. Your touch is calming, and it assures me you need me as well. You paint your desires onto my skin with your pink lips, write your stories with my gasped breaths, sculpt me out of shape with soft and skilled fingers.

And in my mind I think, _I love you_. Would it hurt less if I didn't?

Or, if I could tell you openly, would it hurt less if I did?

These words, these feelings, are a burden. And I do not know if I will ever be rid of them.

For now, I can't care.


	8. Leah

No one knows of my secret obsession with you. Except for Leah.

She's a fellow model just like me, and I've actually worked with her on several photo shoots. She's got perpetually tan skin and light brown ringlets and hazel eyes that photographers just love to capture on film. Her build is athletic and she's secured so many spots on sport magazine covers despite never playing any of those sports a day in her life, that it's dizzying. She's quite successful. The only thing that holds her back from reaching newer heights is her biting attitude.

She lashes out at anyone, friend or foe. She doesn't hold back from sinking her fangs and it's this behavior that has lead me and her close to coming to blows. She'd irritate me to no end, coming at me for my work ethic, telling me what I should fix, and disparaging me when I failed to reach some unattainable standard she had imagined up for me. And if it wasn't for work related reasons than it was picking at me for my food or clothing choices. Frankly, all this negative attention was pissing me off, even as I tried my best to shrug them off. Ignoring Leah only made her press harder, however. Which made it harder on me to remain civil and it was reflecting in my work quality. My contractors weren't happy and I was even less so, knowing I had to do something about Leah.

Like an adult, I tried talking to her, tried to get her to explain to me why she was doing this. She refused to listen or be an active participant in the conversations, only inciting my anger and frustrations further. I wanted to deck her stupid infuriating face.

I had sworn to drop my bad girl act and leave it in high school where I had thought I needed it to survive, but she was drawing out who I had been in the past more and more to the surface until it finally exploded free.

We met in fists and snarls, me fighting to protect my honor, my pride, and Leah fighting to save her pretty face from my ire.

It had been years since I fought but some things can't be forgotten. All those years of shielding you from stupid girls who just liked to pick fights for no reason, had given me an edge over Leah who had never actually expected to be assaulted by a model. I wasn't above getting down and dirty, especially if I was cornered into doing it. It would make Leah think twice about continually bothering me.

And when I finally had her down on the floor, bleeding from her lip, I pulled her up by the expensive crop top she had worn to attend a club downtown and stared her right into her eyes. "Now, will you tell me why you're being an insufferable bitch?" I growled at her.

"I just wanted your attention," Leah said calmly, her eyes dancing in mirth.

"Well you got it," I spat back, letting her stand to her own feet. She didn't seem put out by my hitting her. In fact, she almost glowed from it, alive with some sort of energy. "So what do you want from me."

"I want you to fuck me," she says confidently and I think for a good couple of seconds that I've misheard, that the fist she'd struck my temple with has messed with my hearing. But she stays smiling that infuriating smile, gazing at me expectantly, and I know I haven't misheard.

"Why?" I don't understand this. If her actions had been a precursor to this moment, they would have been pieces of a puzzle from a box that said the ending image was supposed to be a dark hole only for none of the pieces to actual fit together.

"Because you're hot. And I'm hot. It only makes sense for the two of us to bump pretties," she wipes the blood coming from her nose with the back of her hand and I shake my head, totally overwhelmed by her actual goals in seeking my attentions.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"I'm not. And I can show you how much I'm not, if only you let me." Her words are a purr and I shake my head again.

"And you really thought the best way to convince me to sleep with you was to get me riled up so much that I wanted to- and did- physically hurt you?" I uncharacteristically feel uncertain of myself, of the situation around me. Confidence is something that comes naturally to me, and I feel sure of myself enough that I can handle whatever is thrown at me without blinking an eye.

You are an exception; I only wear the shell of confidence around you, while insecurities eat up at me. And so is Leah. I don't know what to say to her. For once my elegant mouth makes an inelegant sigh of defeat.

Leah shrugs, uncaring. "What can I say. I like my violence. And I knew you had it in you, if I pressed long enough. I was right; you can't truly change your ways even if you try."

Those words struck me with a sudden sadness. I thought of you; the one I love more than anything. Was there no hope of that ever changing? If I couldn't even keep my once rebel personality under check, was there no way to control my feelings for you? To finally eradicate them?

I didn't want to lose my love for you, but at this point, it would be the best for both of us. Best for me, because I would no longer have to suffer living without your arms wrapped around me, without your lips pressed to my cheek in an utterly domestic stance, living the white picket fence dream together. Best for you, because I kept jerking you around to my own selfish whims and needs. I knew you had a life you needed to live and I was keeping you from doing it fully.

Leah noticed my change in mood and slapped a hand onto my shoulder. "I know you're going through some shit right now."

I gave her an odd look. My private life was private- as much as it could be as a model- so what did she know about it that I didn't? I had broken up with my most recent boyfriend two months ago by now. I was totally over it. "Don't give me that look," she huffs, almost offended that I think lowly of her deductive skills. "Your actions of dating so many people and offhandedly dumping them, reek of a woman with an unrequited love."

I open my mouth to refute her point but nothing comes out. It feels good that someone knows. Why does it feel so good?

It's like my soul connects more closely with her. Like I feel lighter; ready to burst into tears.

"I've been there before. And it's not...a good place to be. That's why I'm offering this to you. I'm offering myself up to you. You need an outlet for your pain, and I happen to like a lot of pain mixed into my pleasure." She arches her brows. I get the message. But I don't know if I like it. How would hurting someone else stop the hurt in me?

"Let me know what you decide. Just be warned, even if you say no, I find that I can be very persuasive." She saunters away at that, already ready to party despite just being in an altercation with me.

I sighed and leaned against the brick alleyway. Closed my eyes. Soaked in the new information I had on Leah.

Opened my eyes.

Decided.

* * *

I take her up on her offer, because it does in a way feel good to impress the way you make me feel into the skin and bone of another. It lessens my own pain. Each black blue imprint of my fingers alleviates some of the strain in my soul. Each red scratch mark down the valley of breasts and legs makes me smile. Each choked breath makes my own flow more easily.

This is the opposite of love making even if love was motivating me. I hate Leah, but she's the only person I trust in this world. More than even myself. She gives it to me straight even if she is more crooked than a hunched man's back.

I've divulged the deepest darkest secrets of my heart to her and she's locked up all my suffering within her body. I don't understand it. Why she likes the taste of pain so much that she takes up others.

"It's simple, really."

"What is?" I ask, reviving from my quiet contemplation's of staring at white walls and trying hard to pretend it's not Leah but _you,_ who sits next to me on the couch, hand holding mine, other resting on the back of my neck. But the illusion is shattered when Leah speaks, her tone's caustic but dulcet at the same time. Languidly words pass through her mouth, stretched over velvet lips. Relaxed just like her posture. She's so animalistic, there is no other way to put it. It's what has rendered her so popular. There is a thing to be said for humans and their callings toward nature, that drag we suffer towards it's mystery and danger. She encapsulates that peril and perplexity. I understand why people like her; she's raw, unlike my poised poses and faked energy and smiles.

I want to learn to be more like her, at the same time I despise her natural talent's.

"You were wondering why I like the pain. And it's all a result of a simple reason, not something complex, so let your mind at ease."

It's scary how much she can read me. Her eyes belie her predatory nature, all sharp and narrow. They look at me hungrily and I'm shocked I never noticed this before. "Do enlighten me," I huff out, upset she has cut into my previous daydreaming.

"It's because I'm so perfect."

I arch my brow at that, but she raises a hand. "Let me finish." She lowers her hand back where it had been caging my hand on my lap. We are keeping our hook ups, or sessions, as it would be better to call these arranged meetings. For she is helping me scratch an itch and I am helping her scratch hers, but under the facade that we hate each other still. It's not an act on my part. As for her, I can't truly read how she feels about me. Reading people has never been my strong suit.

"I have this amazing body given to me, handed to me on a silver platter really, and it's perfect. Enough people have called it that, that it's not up for debate," she catches my eye just as I'm about to open my mouth so I stop myself and let her go on. "And it's because I have something like this, something that should be cherished and protected and valued- hell, do you know how many people would kill to be me?- that I want to ruin it, only because I shouldn't. Fuck it, I have so much going for me- modeling contracts, my own fashion line and a potential place on a popular show. I'm standing at the highest precipice in my life and I want to crash and burn from such heights straight to rock bottom. The fall will be exhilarating."

Her words make sense. But they are twisted. "So, you're trying to kill yourself? Slowly poisoning your body with drugs and alcohol, letting it be run ragged by my hand. "

She smirks at me, happy I've gotten it. "Who said anything about it being slowly?" To punctuate her point she gets off the couch we had recently fucked on and still naked like the day she was born, she stalks over to grab some prescription pills and swallows a handful of them down with a swig of alcohol. I've seen her do more drugs than that in one day. She's a real party animal, running her body into the ground each weekend with drugs, booze, and partying.

I should stop her. I need her. She's my secret keeper. But I don't. Because if she dies, my secrets die with her and there is no safer place than death for them to reside in.

"I feel like it's your unrequited love that's driving you to do this, and not because you stand at the precipice of the world." I only say this because I am tired of her damn knowing everything. Knowing what I'm thinking about, knowing my secrets, knowing why I do the things I do. I want to catch her off guard for once.

The way her eyes flash let me know I've finally hit a mark; I've been shooting blindfolded in the dark ever since and now I've got her right in the heart.

Her lips twist up like they will argue with me, but then she smirks. "Alice."

"Alice?" I get up, stretch my back, peel my shirt off from the floor and put it on. My bra has been ripped apart by Leah's claws. The third this month. I'll have to remember to bill her for it.

"Alice Cullen."

I turn to her, eyes wide. " _The_ Alice Cullen?"

"Yup."

"The one who lives in Forks?"

"Yup," she cocks her head back, like this is a fact she should be proud of. "The one whose as straight as she is short." Undeniably, unchangeably, short and straight. At least the girl whose love tormented me swung my way. There was no way in hell Leah could pull anything off with Alice.

"I've never even seen the two of you together. How is that possible?" I'm in shock, my pants hanging limp from my fingers.

"I used to live in Alaska as a kid. So did Alice before she moved to Forks when her father decided to move from the oil industry to lumber."

"You used to go to school with her?"

Leah nods her head, looks off to the side. Rubs her arms; goosebumps are popping up from her being naked so long. "Up until college. We've known each other since Preschool. I fell in love with her not long after we first met."

"Oh." To be in love with someone so long. How terrible. It wasn't a blessing, it was a curse then. I almost stopped hating Leah a little bit in that moment. She was brave. And strong.

"She always used to tell me how much she loved our friendship, while she left me behind as a second thought for any man that just popped up, showing any interest in her. But as soon as she left, I took that as a chance given to me by some higher power to cut my loses with her. Only it didn't work out so well. Here I am, a billion years later with more issues than a magazine."

She gives me a self deprecating smirk so I shoot one back to her, throwing her her shirt so she can warm up. "Yea, but at least those magazines have your face on them."

And with that I can tell I've made Leah's day better. Maybe tonight she won't fall asleep with a bottle of pills clutched between her fingers.


	9. Not if you Rip out my Heart

This time when I come back to you, things are different, and not in a good way.

"No more." You say and all I can do is echo that damnable phrase even as each utterance breaks my heart into tiny pieces to be swept up in the breeze and lost to the world. I'm miles away now even as I stand rooted firmly onto the balcony of your house smoking only to smoke never again.

I'll never need to smoke to choke down the words _I love you_ because we'll never sleep together again.

My hands shake dangerously and my mind whirls and my stomach lurches and you've followed me out onto the damn balcony and you're suffocating me. I just need some damn space. But I don't tell you to leave because what's the point? You're already leaving me anyways. Why speed up the process. This is the last I'll ever be like this with you.

We're making conversation, but if you asked me what it was about I couldn't tell you. Your words sink unrealized into my head. The edges of my vision are blurred, tunneled until I can only see the pond in the backyard. My mouth is running on autopilot until it finally runs out of fuel and I have to go. Because these cigarettes won't stop the tears from coming and I don't want you to see me shed cerulean. I don't deserve to cry over something I never even had.

I book a flight right back to where I know Leah lives and I pack a bag, board the plane and knock on Leah's summer villa house's door, all while shaking like my body is racked with cold. I'm numb, my body frozen all over. I'm bleeding, my body stinging, my chest aching where my heart had been.

She opens the door, clad in only a bath robe, and takes stock of me. Her face darkens. "I'm going to kill that bitch for doing this to you."

I don't respond. I let my body do the talking.

I'm more rough than usual. My hands have a mind of their own and I can't stop them from hurting. It's like a white fog has fallen over my mind and I can't find my way out of it. It has to naturally dissipate.

It takes two hours for that to happen and when it's over I'm horrified at my own self. I wonder if I have pushed Leah too far. If I have damaged her. But she smiles up brokenly at me from where I'm still straddling her waist. Her face is one of rapt wonder.

"Wow. You've been holding out on me all this time," she says in a throat tight voice that's been crushed too many times in one night, and I finally let the tears fall. Because this time the hurt was too strong to transfer it to someone else no matter how much I tried, and it threatens to break me completely.

Leah holds me, strong arms wrapped around my quivering shoulders and this time, just barely, it's enough to hold me together.

* * *

I awake the next day in a haze, and go to sleep in a haze. I know Leah's hovering somewhere around me, prodding me to eat, to speak, to move around and function like a normal human being. But I'm resilient to her efforts. I don't want to be human right now. I wish I was a robot, because robots can't feel this torment that I am going through.

She tries to coax words out of me, to figure out what happened this time. I think I tell her. I don't know. All I can think about is that moment on the balcony, where my life crumpled apart.

I vaguely think that I'm going to outlaw balconies from existing. I don't want those monsters in my life; don't want those sharp reminders of my downfall. And it's only when Leah wrestles the axe from hand that I realize I've taken it upon myself to start that. She forces me down to the floor, pins me down, axe out of reach. My hands are bleeding from splinters and there's pieces of the wooden balcony around me, lying around like amputated limbs of a beast.

"Relax. Relax," Leah screams harshly into my ear, and I think she's the one who needs to relax, because I'm already crying, all the anger in me dissipating as I turn into a useless puddle.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry," I chant out through saltwater waves coming from my eyes. I don't know why I'm apologizing. Those balconies had it coming to them. Maybe I'm calling out to you, hoping you will hear me all these miles away. Hear me and take me back. I don't know what I did wrong, but I want to fix it.

I want to fix myself.

If only I had your touch, it would work.

But no matter how hard I try to mimic it under the safety of white comforter and pillows, I don't have the same patience and gentleness that you do. I'm much too violent, too rushed.

"I could help with that," Leah offers as she passes by my room and hears my frustrated moans.

"Shut up!" I growl back at her and glower at my own body for it's inability to be satisfied.

I don't know how much time passes after that. I guess it's been a year since then. I'm not really sure. Only Leah keeps me updated on the day and week and months that pass. I've been bumming it out at her house, dressed in sweats, hair a matted mess. She's loyal. She stays by my side. Tells me I can stay here as long as I want. As I need.

She's still got murder written in her eyes. She wants to make you hurt for all you've done to me, but I beg her not to.

"I have to do this myself. I have to tell her how I feel."

"And how long will that take?"

Leah's not pushing me. Just curious.

"It took you ten years to get over Alice, and you still aren't completely cured."

Leah laughs; it's humorless. "I didn't know you liked me so much you'd want to stay ten years."

I frown. "That's not what I meant. I meant, I just need time. Time to..."

"Stop being a coward?" Leah supplies with an arched brow. "Don't get me wrong. I love fucking you, it's nice to have you here for that, but that's no way to live. You still have a modeling career to go back to."

"Do I?" I lean back on the couch that has been my bed for the past months. Leah has offered me her bed, and her guest room bed many times, but I refuse. I don't know why.

Perhaps I'm too broken to even sleep in a bed like a normal person.

I wonder, do you hurt as much as me?

You must not, if you were able to break what we had up.

A sharp slap pulls me into the present. I stare up at Leah's angry face. "Don't say that," she hisses down at me. "You still have a future. She's not everything."

"Except she is," I mumble out. I can still feel the sting of the slap. I can only feel pain, it seems.

Leah sighs. "This isn't like you. What happened to the strong woman that you used to be?"

"I don't know." I answer honestly. I wish I knew where she went so I could find her. I wanted her back.

Leah ponders me, sighs again. "I have to go to work. Call her. Figure something out." She leaves and I fiddle with the phone in my hand. It's new. The sixth one this year. I broke the first one because...well, I don't even remember how, it was still during those hazy first couple of days. The second one, I flung out the window after I had gotten frustrated trying to compose a message to you. I couldn't find the right words to beg you to take me back.

The third one I smashed against the wall because it had your number in it, and I didn't want it there. It was just mere digits but they were a direct connection to you, the one who had inflicted so much pain, that I felt like those numbers were taunting me. But I felt foolish after doing that, so I quickly bought a new phone and put your number in it, before I smashed it again for the same reason.

The fifth phone, I wrecked because it _didn_ ' _t_ have your number in it, and I wanted it there. Leah eventually caught onto my habits and forbade me from buying a new phone until I would stop breaking them. This sixth one is the one that I can stand to use. I press on your name, let my fingers hover over the text box, and then exit. I can't do it. I'm still a coward.

Instead, I internet stalk you. As soon as I google your author name, Stephanie Meyers, I see that you have come out with a new book. I'm intrigued. It's gotten a lot of good reviews despite the anguished material. Without thinking I download it and set upon reading it.

I don't make it more than twenty pages before I break down in tears.

It's so obvious. It's so obvious that I don't know how I didn't see this before, all these years ago. You, _you've been in love with me all this time_.

And this book of poems- every single one of them is about me. About the longing, the hurt, the love, the want, the need, and the suffering, that has come with the friends with benefits relationship we had.

I am overwhelmed with joy, and anger, and sadness, and longing- why didn't you tell me in person? Why did you have to wait until you could put this all in words on paper to let me know?

Maybe you hadn't intended for me to know. Had hoped I wouldn't read this. But I have. And it's all so wrong.

_No more, I say._

_No more, you parrot._

_Both phrases full of anguish, but is yours faked? Or real? After all these years, I guess saying no more doesn't hurt you more, but comes as a relief._

_I want to say so much, on that balcony, the moonlight revealing my bare bones and heart; I've stripped all my desires for you, and denied them, tossed them away. I can't afford to let you see how much of you has made up me, but it is my skin, and muscles, and organs, and the very breath between my lips. The only thing that is me is my bones; I am but a skeleton without you. Not a real being._

_I want to say so much- want to apologize for making you smoke, for making you come back to this shitty backwater town just for me, for making you deal with my even shittier friends. I'm sorry for being here._

_I want to be free. It's selfish, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's for the best. And I know it will be the best for you. You don't have to think of me, feel pity for me and in the boring cage of life I have been trapped in._

_Be free. Be you. For when I made my birthday wish, I only told you the half of it. The other half, I hold close to my heart because if I speak it, it won't come true, and I don't want the worst for you even after all this, but the best._

_Be free, my rose. But don't let your thorns hurt anyone else like they have hurt me._

I want to scream at you. How could you think all that? You are the rose with thorns that has pricked me one too many times. Yet, like an idiot I kept touching you, bleeding all over, oblivious to both my and your pain. I never meant to make you feel less than you are, like a charity case.

I did all those things because I was in love with you, and was hiding desperately that I was. But now...now I need to tell you the truth.

We've been in the same boat all along, but looking out at different directions of the sea, while the vessel fills with water that is making us sink, yet the two of us are too blind to notice it. Too stubborn to notice it even as the saltwater laps at our ankles, sucking threateningly, wanting to pull us into dark depths of despair.

I hop into the shower, attempt to wash months of anguish out of my skin. Fix my hair, cover up the bags under my eyes. I pack my bag back up and leave a note for Leah, before booking a last minute flight.

It's time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: FINALLY! OUR GIRLS WILL BE REUNITED!


	10. Marriage of Ideals

My throat is dry but my hands are wet.

My eyes are itching with unshed tears but I don't dare entertain letting them flow freely because it will ruin my makeup.

My insides are twisting in discomfort but I push the feeling aside for I no longer have the time for this.

The hours and minutes have finally ticked down to this. To this big moment. And I feel like my heart is going to burst from my chest.

Yet I can't blame myself for my current wretched state. I was the one to suggest this, and I did nothing to stop it when slowly by slowly my words became a reality, one that I could not escape from.

_I will be happy. I will be happy._

I whisper it to myself as if somehow it will convince me this is the truth. That this is how it should be- how it will be.

And maybe it can be? Maybe this isn't the end- isn't the end to us- because once I say yes, it's all over. I can only be loyal to one, and it's not going to be her.

 _She had her chance,_ I tell myself. I wouldn't give her any more. I wouldn't.

I twist the white material between my fingers and sit down, feeling stiff in the tight cloth adorning my body.

If I'm going to be happy, than why do I feel so scared? Why do I want to run?

"There you are, beautiful," Edward's voice makes me jolt up from my chair so fast I nearly trip. "Hey, careful there." His hands slide around from the back and lace in front of my stomach. His lips graze my shoulder where the skin is bare. My skin pebbles up but in cold dread and with him here I feel suffocated. Feel weighed down with iron in the very pit of my stomach.

 _I was the one who wanted this_ , I remind my self. And I did. At the time. At the time when I had just released my book and was fretting about it's reception. It had done superbly well. Surprisingly so. My publishers wanted more from me like that and I was willingly to oblige once I got over my terror. What if she read it? What if she knew about my pitiful pinning of her, and she sat and she laughed and spat cruel words in my face?

I couldn't take that. I needed support, I needed the safety of unfailing bonds of romance to someone else to show her that I didn't want her like that. That it wasn't really her I had written about. Yes, I had wanted to get my true feelings out there, but now I was scared that they were too true. That I hadn't protected them with enough falsities, instead leaving them bare and cold for anyone to pick and prod at and deride.

"Edward, we're not supposed to see each other before." My voice comes out soft and it trembles. His keen ears catch that. "It's bad luck." I've had enough bad luck in romance to last me a while.

"I just had to see you. To make sure you're okay." He is too perceptive. He knows I'm not over her yet, but he is willing to give me another chance and serve as the distraction I well need and deserve. It turns out I'm not the only one with lingering feelings that won't depart. Edward has still held me close to his heart for so long and I appreciate that at the same moment I hate him for it.

Why can he love so easily and she can't? I don't deserve him; he should be with someone else who will love him better. Who will treat him better.

I can't do that when she still takes up the number one spot in my heart no matter how many times I have tried vanquishing her from there.

She remains stubbornly in place, like a wine stain on a rug.

I turn in his arms, flash him a smile that is all teeth no sincerity. "I'm okay. Just getting a bit nervous. It _is_ somewhat of a big deal today."

"I know. I'm nervous too." He takes my hand and brushes his lips against my knuckles. "But seeing you has steadied my nerves and my resolve." He drops my hand and gives me a crooked smile. His smile was the first thing I feel in love with all those years ago, but will it keep me in love with him? Will it last? Will _this_ , last?

Questions I am afraid to hear the answer to.

He leaves me alone in the room now and I sit back down, waiting for Alice to zoom in and finish my makeup. She's wearing a light fuchsia dress; her instance that it be the color for this event. I couldn't say no to her, not when she had much better tastes than me.

She's a chatter box, flitting around my face like a fairy, using light touches to apply my mask of beauty. I clench my knees hard and mutter out one word responses because her annoyingly happy attitude only makes my anxiety worse. She's elated for me, for this huge step in my life, telling me how I should have settled down years ago like she did. She's giving me tips of how to keep a man satisfied and I swallow down the bile that rises in my throat. It's too much too soon.

I need some space. Some time. To gather myself.

When's she done, I tell her I need some time alone to calm my nerves. She chuckles and wishes me luck before flitting out. But being alone only makes it worse for I have nothing to distract me from my thoughts and the pain in my gut intensifies.

 _I want to do this. I want to do this,_ I force my words to bring up my mood, to soothe my innards. The words only taste like ash in my mouth.

There is a loud slam of a door and I jump again.

"Edward, be careful. You really need to stop scaring me like this-" I turn to the doorway and my words freeze in my throat, choking me as my legs sway.

 _She's_ here, hair frazzled, eyes wild, and chest heaving. She looks like a mess; I've never seen her like this. There are bags under her eyes, her skin is pale and lackluster, her clothes don't fit her like they should, yet she still looks as beautiful as ever. My heart thumps in my chest painful. It hurts so much to see her here, as if the heartbreak occurred just yesterday. However, I cannot tear my eyes away from her, drinking in her image greedily. I long to touch her, to kiss her upon her soft lips, to make her mine for once and for all. Alas, that chance has long passed.

She takes in my white dress, my carefully styled hair, and my makeup, and her face falls. "You're getting married. I can't believe this." Her voice is one of pure disbelief and...heartbreak. "Why?"

I give her a wry smile. "What do you mean, why? Isn't it obvious. People in love marry. I love Edward." The word love preceding Edward's name feels wrong. And it is even more wrong that _I_ am the one who loves him.

"You don't love him. You love me." She says this surely, and takes a step into the room, than another. Slams the door shut behind her. She never was any good at doing things quietly. Or gently. She fumbles in her pocket for something. Pulls out a wrinkled piece of paper. It looks like it has been read and re-read several times. The words are blurred where tears have fallen.

She straightens the paper out. "I read your book."

I should have expected that. She reads all my works.

I shrug, trying to look nonchalant. "So?"

"I know how you feel about me."

Suddenly anger hits me. I'm tired of denying this, of being ashamed of my feelings. It's not like I can bend over backwards now. I am at the point of no return. "So what? You want a fucking gold star? Congratulations, you figured out the big secret I kept from you all these years in order to preserve our friendship. And if you don't like it- if you're here to fucking spit on me for it- than go ahead. I don't care!" My voice is rising in pitch and my hands go up in the air with it.

Her eyes flash with hurt at my assumptions but I am feeling defensive and vulnerable and I do not need her here on my special day, ruining it.

She opens her mouth- to argue I am sure, to reprimand me for yelling pointlessly at her- and reads the poem from my book she has selected.

_"I know it is love because my heart strings tug to you,_

_trying to pull me closer despite every step you take farther away._

_They long to beat in rhythm with yours, yet my heart isn't strong enough_

_or big enough to love for two,_

_because you saw to it with each man in your bed that  
_

_it would chip away a little and little more each day at my red organ  
_

_until it was like fish tank with holes, holes that leaked out water bit by bit so that the fish in it,_

_lovely things of color and stripes, innocent, died gasping and unable to do anything to change their fate  
_

_one of a slow death_

_I know it is love because my eyes remain glued to you,_

_unable to look anywhere else, for you are my world_

_all I want to do is drink you in; you are indeed a sight for sore eyes_

_and my eyes trace the gentle swoop of your neck,_

_the long lashes framing your brown honey eyes which are sweeter than the sweetest nectar,_

_and the soft pillows of your lips, in which I want to immerse myself into and never leave,  
_

_on which dreams are made on_

_Looking at you, mesmerized in even the simplest of expressions of joy or anger, makes my eyes water_

_Looking at you causes me pain, because I know no matter how much I look I am only window shopping_

_and you will be picked up by someone who can actually afford to keep you_

_I know it is love because of the way my breath catches in my throat_

_I feel like I am drowning on land_

_like I am in the vacuum of space_

_like I am suffocating on the words of passion my breath wills to be spoken but which cannot be_

_I want to say I love you so badly,  
_

_want to say it with every cell of my body,_

_yet I cannot for I have buried these words for so deep and so long that I can't even tell_

_once they come up, if they will be the same._

_Instead of a simple I love you,_

_will it be, I love you so fucking much?_

_or I love you, so why won't you love me?_

_I used to think time would tell- that one day you would fall in love with me_

_But I've seen time has only made things worse  
_

_so maybe it's time to move on_

_to someone who will love me like you cannot_

She finishes reading the poem, her hands shaking as she folds the paper back up.

Why has she read this to me? What is she trying to prove? How pathetic I sound? I am well aware of that.

"Your poems all resonate so much with me. They are the words which I do not know how to speak." A sigh, heavy and deep. Burdened. "I was so stupid," she begins with, running a hand through her hair. "I was so blind. I spent so much time focusing on my own emotions, on my own suffering, on hiding my feelings, that I never noticed yours even when they were so blatant." She sucks in a breath; looks like she is going to die from nerves.

She picks her eyes up, the orbs glowing with sincerity. Her speech is soft now.

"I love you. I've loved you all this time. Ever since we first met."

Her words hit me like a ton of bricks and I can't breathe. I'm happy, angry, confused. I don't know what to do with myself. "Are you...for real?" I feel faint on my feet.

"Yes. I am serious. As serious as I can be. And I'm so sorry I didn't see all this before. So sorry I was such a bitch to you, that you felt like I treated you like trash. I never meant to." Her voice is on the verge of breaking but her eyes are dry. "And I want to rectify that. I want to make things right by you. I want us to stop denying what we have between each other."

Oh, she wants to do that now? Now when it's too late? An ugly laugh makes it out of my throat before I can stop myself. "I'm getting married. Married to Edward. And now you want to to do this?"

"I never received the wedding invitation. I only found out now-"

"Of course you only found out now! If you had talked to me at all-" I'm waving my hands around frantically.

"I know. We can't communicate," she shoots me a wistful look. "That's what lead to this whole misunderstanding. To this whole mess of- god, has it really been sixteen years?" She gives a humorless laugh, rubs the bridge of her nose. "Sixteen years of this shit? Of running around in circles around each other?"

I can hear faint music beginning to play from outside. It's the wedding march. I'll have to walk down the aisle soon. My nerves are gone, I guess I should thank her for that. She's truly come and distracted me. All I am is angry now. And wistful. Why hadn't she come sooner?

"So that's why, I'm going to tell you this: I quit my modeling career."

"You what-?" I can't help my gasp. I'm truly shocked.

"I don't want to leave you anymore. I hated doing that in the first place, I was always afraid you would leave me for someone else, for Edward." Another humorless laugh. "Guess I was right about that one."

My lips thin tightly. "You don't have a right to forbid me from him when you slept with how many other men." I am jealous and bitter but I have every right to be, because she could have been mine all along and she instead choose to spend her time with other people even though she loved me.

"I know, I know," she says softly. "Like I said, I was shitty. Probably a worse word than that. So I want to fix things. I want to cherish you properly and I can't do that if you're marrying Edward." She gets down on one knee.

My stomach backflips as I suddenly realize what she's going to do. My eyes prick with tears. "Please, don't do this. Please don't-" _don't give me the chance to chose because it will be you every time but you don't deserve that._

She wants to sabotage the wedding. She pulls out a shiny metal band from her pocket. It's beautiful. It's the ring I always wanted but could never have. "Isabella Marie Swan, will you marry me?"

Tears are streaming down my face freely and my hands are in my hair, pulling painfully, ruining the careful construction of my wedding day look. "Oh god, Rosalie, why are you doing this to me? You know Edward-"

As if summoned by my name he storms in, worried. "Bella, the wedding-" he stops when he sees Rosalie on bent knee and me crying.

He comprehends the situation in seconds. He's had his suspicions for years now.

He smiles meanly. "You've had your chance Rosalie. Bella is mine now."

"Fuck you!" Rosalie rises in one smooth motion and punches Edward so hard his nose breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Their names are revealed in this chapter because they finally have confessed their love to one another, so they can truly see each other for who they are; can see each other for the first time.


	11. Never

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter is rough, but next chapter is the happy ending we all need.

I never did make it to my own wedding. How funny is that?

After the fiasco with Rosalie updating Edward's facial structure, it was all called off as they carted him away to the hospital and as Rosalie carted me away from it all. And what a sight it must have been. A wife to be running away with another woman after her husband to be bleed. I must have looked ridiculous running in my white dress, trail snaking behind me and getting dirty as Rosalie tugged me away, hair wild and eyes even wilder. And then, we were in her car and she was driving us back to her place.

There she divulged me of my dress and my undergarments and explained to me with her tongue on my skin and her fingers buried deep in me, just how much she loved and missed me. Afterwards, lying in the aftermath of soaked and twisted sheets, she slipped the ring she had gotten me onto my finger. It felt right, seeing it there, and it shone a soft golden color. "You know, the honeymoon usually takes place after the wedding, not before it."

She rests her head on the pillow next to mine, smiles gently at me. "We always did get things backwards."

And I can't help but smile with her before I lean in to kiss her. "Rosalie Swan?"

"I think it ought to be Isabella Hale. I was the one who proposed to you after all." She quips back, her lips brushing mine as she speaks.

"Hmmm, no. You'll have to say something more convincing than that to change my mind on the matter," I tease.

"Why tell you, when I can _show_ you," she insists and turns me onto my back again.

Something monumental has changed with us. Our confessions have freed us from the chains weighing down on our souls; they let us soar to the sky, let us float to heaven. Rosalie's touch is not harsh and possessive any longer, for why should she feel the need to claim me when I am already hers. Her touch is gentle and loving, finally able to be the way it was meant to be. She makes sure every inch of my skin is worshiped with her lips, a litany of affectionate words streaming from her lips. "Let me count the ways I love you. I love your smile, your hair, your eyes..." and on and on she goes as she kisses each and every part of me she lists. I've made a poet out of her yet.

As for me, my touch is stronger now. When I carve my words onto her, they are bold and loud and proud, no longer small and quivering; italics. I am no longer afraid to break her with my love so I have no need to hold back. I can do as I please and I scrap nails down her back and over her shoulders and my kisses are bruising and bleeding and they tear her apart, let her love drip freely onto me.

But we cannot stay in bed all day long, no matter how much the thought pleases us both. Because outside these sheets, there is a world we have left behind, a world we have ruined along with the lives in it.

This daydream has to end.

Like every daydream before it.

But it was nice while it lasted.

And she knows it. She _knows_ it. Just like knowing how to breathe, it comes so naturally to her now to see the pain in my eyes because she lets herself she it. I fiddle with the ring on my finger. "We..."

She cradles my hand in hers. "I know. I know." And there is nothing but regret in her eyes for the years we could have been but weren't.

So I take the ring off.

My tears fall on our conjoined hands.

* * *

Never it is the same again.

Never is Edward's nose perfectly straight. Stare close enough at it and you can see how it leans to the right.

Never does he look at me the same way. There is irreparable hurt lingering in his eyes and his lips perpetually twist up when he looks at me, blaming me for running away with her on our special day; on ruining it; on ruining him. I think my facial expression must mirror his but for all the wrong reasons. I don't ache out of love for him, but sadness. I'm sad on his behalf that he is in love with me and he clearly knows and sees how I cannot love him, and yet he is forced to stay with such damnable feelings.

I know exactly how it feels to be in that position and I wouldn't wish it upon my own worst enemy.

That's why we have an arrangement.

He won't take no for an answer. He refuses to believe I would want to be with Rosalie; that I would pick her over him even though he knows it is perfectly reasonable I would. And I cannot take his yelling; the promise of hatred in his eyes if I do not give this to him. So I have no choice but to. Because if I lose him, I lose him not only as a lover but as a friend, and I do not trust Rosalie to never hurt me deeply like before, and if I do not have him to help me through that, than I'll be lost. Lost and devastated.

So I marry him in a small private ceremony. And during the week I am his.

His ring rests on my left hand, like a clamp on my ring finger that prevents blood circulation and makes my finger feel dead and heavy with burden.

He gives me yet another chance and I do not want to waste it. I want to make sure he doesn't have to suffer like he does. I have my warm memories of that day with her. Of that moment after the first failed wedding. I do not care if I suffer, for I deserve to for my guilt.

Her ring rests on my right hand, comfortable around my ring finger. I look at it ten times a day if not more, and see my pained smile reflect in the metal. It reminds me of things that could have been; that would have been. It could have been right, but it went left and now Edward's ring rests on my left hand, binding my life to his.

But on the weekend I am hers.

* * *

"So, did you get the girl?" Leah asks through the phone and I sigh.

"I did. For a day. But then reality set in and...and it all fell apart. I was too late." I can't even muster the energy to be upset at myself, at you, at the circumstances that arose because it's all my fault things ended up like this.

"Well...shit," Leah is speechless.

Everyone always expects the grand romantic gestures to win someone over, but it's not how life works. Sometimes I wish my life were a sappy romantic movie because the lovers in it would suffer a bit, argue a bit, but they'd end up together, hopelessly in love with one another. There was a timed period of suffering; once the movie was over, everything was sunshine and rainbows.

There was no time limit for suffering in real life.

I wish there was.

There was no eternal promise of happiness when the credits rolled.

I really wish there was.

But...never was it the case. If my life was a movie than it was an angst fest. Fate was the director and I the actress whose script kept changing, just as she had memorized it, just gotten the action scenes together. Bella was the other actress and her script too would be muddled, and we'd miss cues and lines and not be able to understand a stitch of what we were saying or doing but the camera would keep rolling and at the end the film would get released and we'd get shitty reviews and critiques with no sign of a sequel to come.

"It's fine, though. We've come to an understanding." I think back to Edward coming up to me. It had been a day after I had stolen his bride from him and broken his nose and the white gauze was a stark reminder of what had happened; white for her dress; white for the sheets where we finally made love for the first time. I didn't feel an ounce of guilt for it. I would do it all over again.

I held out my hand with the ring I had bought for her. "She said no, in the end." My face was tough but my voice shook.

He looked at the ring, looked at me. Shook his head. "Keep it. Give it to her again later."

I jerked my hand back. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. It's not my ring she wants to wear but yours." He twists his ring on his finger nervously. Looks up, and then back, mulling over his next words. His face twists in pain as his offer falls out. "I love Bella, but she won't be completely happy with me even if she does love me in her own way. And I'd rather have half her heart than none of it."

"Looks like we all are cursed in our love," I give a dry humorless laugh.

He gives out a wry smile. "So I want you to be able to take care of her. For the week, she'll be my wife. And then during the weekend, she'll be yours."

The ring is my hand suddenly gains some weight. It no longer feels full of empty promises but with hope. "Are you crazy?" I whisper out, unable to believe his proposition.

"Crazy in love." And his words are words I know all too well; a sentiment I have cashed in on unwillingly.

"Okay," I say and we shake on it. "No hard feelings about the nose? And the wedding?" I ask. I try hard to stem the smile threatening to split my lips.

"No. It made me realize something, and that Bella needs you in her life. But she also needs me, because when you fuck with her feelings again, I need to be there to help her. I won't let you ruin her like you almost did over those years."

My smile sours at this and my hand goes slack in his grip.

"So you fuck her on the weekends?" Leah asks once I finish telling her what had occurred.

"No, it's not that..." my lips twist up. "Why must you be so vulgar?"

"You never had a problem with me addressing it as that before."

"Yes, well, you're talking about my wife and I won't have her talked about in that manner."

I can feel Leah's eye roll through the phone. "Are you fucking serious? Married- mind you, only for two days a week- and you already don't know how to fucking act?"

"Why can I say," my grin is too cheesy. I know the situation I am in is not ideal, but I can work with it. Like Edward said, I'd rather have half of Bella's heart than none of it. And I've played with your feelings for too long. I don't have a right to complain now. "Love changes you."

Leah grunts out a noise that I can't read. "I'm dropping by Forks in a month's time."

"Worried about me?"

"As if," she snorts. "Just want to meet this Bella person and see if she's really worth all this pain in your life."

"She is," I say without hesitation.

Leah hangs up on me with a disbelieving hum and a second later the doorbell to my mansion rings. I rush to the door and you are there, suitcase in tow.

"I'm here," you announce. "I'm home."

That night as we lie in bed, me stroking your naked back as you sleep, I contemplate the way life has a habit of circling around. We started this whole ordeal as weekend lovers in the beginning. I'd hit you up and you'd come running over to share my bed and warmth with me. And now, we've finished it the same way. Except now two rings weigh down our intertwined hands, making this something substantial. Something real. Something we can no longer run from.

Some things never change.

* * *

"I suppose she'll do," Leah says after eyeing you head to toe disdainfully. "She could be uglier."

You merely gives her a tight smile. "How nice to see you. Rosalie's told me so much about you."

I'm standing right behind you, arms wrapped around your waist and I kiss the back of your neck so that some of the tension can leave her. It works, and she sighs in my arms.

"I wasn't aware that she told you all the sordid details of our fuck sessions."

I close my eyes. Of course. Uncouth, and with a love to stir up shit, that was Leah.

You tense right back up in my hold. "What?" I'm already planning on what to say to fix this, when Leah cackles deviously. "I'm just teasing you. Jealousy is not a good look on you." Leah pats Bella on her forearm before pushing her way into the house. "Oo what smells good? Who cooked?" she calls out from inside and Bella turns in my arms and arches her brow.

I shrug. "Sorry. Leah's...just Leah."

You exhale and I can't help myself from leaning in and kissing the pucker of your pink lips.

Leah stays for dinner and judges everything, from your manners, to your cooking, to the way your house is arranged. It's amusing to see you try to hold onto your temper, I didn't even know you had one, but Leah has the tendency to bring out the worst in people. I would know.

At the end you cannot be happier to see her leave, slamming the door quickly behind her. "She's so annoying. How did you put up with her?"

I shrug. "She wore me down. And she's really caring under all that. She's good at giving tough love."

You arch your brow and I quickly amend my words. "Not that kind of _love_ ," I stress, because I do not want you to be jealous. I've already caused you enough pain.

"I don't think she likes me."

"Oh, on the contrary she does," I smile down at you. "If she hates someone she would not be as kind as she was."

"She was kind?" you give me a quizzical look.

"She teases those she likes. And she has to like you, because I do."

You don't seem convinced but I kiss away the frown on your lips. I have a feeling that Leah and you will be good friends yet.

* * *

Leah's only purpose in visiting Forks wasn't for Rosalie and Bella's sake.

It was for a certain pixie. One that had stolen her heart and kept it captive. She intended to free her heart today.

She meet up with the woman just like they planned, by the cafe. Alice was sitting down and she jumped up when she saw Leah approach. "Leah!" she squeals and the tan model's heart squeezes. It's been so long since she's seen her and she looks as adorable as always. Alice has even dressed up for this smartly, blazer form fitting and pants neatly pressed. Leah's just in her torn jeans and a tee but she knows she can make that look good too.

And despite the urge to lean in and hug her, Leah stands in place, hands in pocket. "Alice, it's been a while. I have something to tell you."

"Oh, okay," Alice is a bit confused by Leah's grave tone of voice and of her solid and unfriendly stance. She deflates where she stands, hands clutching her clutch.

Leah takes a big breath. "I've loved you for a long time. Ever since we first meet actually, but I've never said anything because I knew you were straight and wouldn't like me. And I had no intention of ever confessing these feelings, but they've continued eating away at me and I can no longer stand to keep them locked up in my chest. So, I'm telling you this not because I'm hoping to hear a confession from you; I know that won't happen. I only wish to divulge myself of these chains that bind me to you. I want to live my life, and no offense, you're stopping me from doing that."

At the end of each sentence, Leah can feel her heart being returned to her piece by piece, and while it is painful, she likes the pain, can handle it, because she knows this pain means the end of all other hurt. No longer will she have to seek out pain in bed to hide her broken heart under, to feel something that will make her alive.

"Leah-!" Alice gasps and the poor woman looks shocked and bewildered, frozen in place.

"Well, that's all I wanted to say to you. I won't bother you ever." Leah rocks back onto the balls of her feet and swivels around. Her heart trails behind her, beating slowly and a bit ashen, but it's finally coming back to her. It's finally _hers_.

When she goes home that night she flushes all the pills and drugs she brought with her down the toilet. Sleep comes easy to her as she falls onto the sheets of her bed. She dreams of nothing for once, just holds a hand over her chest where her heart pumps steadily, and smiles.

* * *

Things are never the same.

For any of us.


	12. Epilogue

Three years after that whole wedding fiasco and things have changed once more between us. Edward has left the threesome we had. I'm not surprised, only shocked that he stayed as long as he did. Guess when one loves something it can be hard to give it up no matter how toxic it is. Just take me for an example. It took me over a decade to finally cut ties with Rosalie and finally get us to talk face to face about our issues. At the time I had hated myself for ending things with her, but now I loved myself for doing it. Standing up, taking the risk was worth it, because it answered the age old question I had stressed over countless sleepless and starless nights.

Is it possible to love you more?

Yes, yes it is.

I had been scared to, and so had she, because falling in love was something risky. It was dangerous even, to ones health and mental state. It was an investment. But most of all, I had been not scared of the consequences of if she had said yes, because I could see a future for us, already mapped out in domestic moments such as coming home to warm dinners and even warmer kisses. I could see it spread across in the stars, stars that only shone when she was around, clearing the dark of the night away and making it less lonely.

I was worried for if she said no, because there would be no way to take back the full extent of my emotions. They would be out in the open, festering under her ambivalent gaze as she let my heart crumble to pieces. I was worried to destroy what we had. And so had she, thus limbo for so many years. But not anymore. The only limbo we do is in bed. Lots of it.

A good thing is the passion from our relationship has not ended. Instead it has come alive, lit by sparks that have arisen from these new aspects in our relationship. By being able to lie side by side on the bed and indulge in intimate touches and in sleepily murmured phrases of I love you from swollen by kisses lips. We belong to no one else, but each other. I do not worry she will leave me. These past three years she has proven her commitment. She speaks her mind, lets her emotions fall like rivulets from her lips, and she only carries eyes for me. Only allows her hands to touch me in the way they do.

And I show the same amount of devotion back to her.

The ring that lies on my finger proves this bond.

Edward took his ring back.

He saw the change between us and with a wry smile, kissed me softly on the top of my head as Rosalie stood off to the side, arms crossed around her chest, but not eyeing him maliciously. He twisted the ring he had given me off of my finger and thumbed it. "You no longer need me. She's not going to hurt you anymore. So I serve no purpose in this relationship." He squints his eyes and I know that it is more to hide his tears than to shield his eyes from the gentle light of the setting sun from atop our makeshift picnic spot on the cold sandy beach of Forks.

"But Edward, I care for you." The sandwich I had been eating got stuck in my throat.

"Not the same way you care for her. And since you are not in aching need of my love, or my protection now, I shall leave. I need to find my own happiness." Then he leans back and throws his ring into the ocean, along with mine.

"What are you doing?" I gasp out.

"I'm going to release the bonds binding me here, go where the rings land I suppose," he looks on at them. "It seems I'm due somewhere that's not here."

"You're leaving," I say, sober. I can't imagine Forks without him. Without his stupid scruffy chin and that good iced tea he makes when we have our chats at his place.

"Farewell," Rosalie sticks out her hand to him and they shake on it. "May you find someone worthy of your time."

He smiles but says nothing. He doesn't even say more words of goodbye to me, just throws his hand up and leaves, feet kicking up some sand. I watch him from where I sit frozen on the blanket. Rosalie sits back down to join me and only when she takes my limp hand in hers and switches the ring on my right hand to my left hand ring finger, does the weight of everything sink in.

"He really left."

"Did you want him to stay? To suffer by your side? I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did," she says and it's her blunt tone of voice that stop me from shedding any tears of self pity. I can't keep thinking he's only here to help me when I feel down. I've been selfish all this time. I was hurting him, and I never listened to his side of things, just expected him to swallow it all down and cater to me.

"No. He doesn't deserve that." I look out into the ocean, the waves gently lapping at me. Something winks in the distance and I know it's the rings. I hoped they would go somewhere far, as would Edward. It was time to leave this shithole, to leave me.

I squeeze Rosalie's hand in mine. "So, you now have me every day of the week. What are you going to do about it?"

"This. Everyday, hopefully," she husks out and kisses me, laying my back on the blanket as she runs her hands up and down my sides and spares no expense on seductive whispers of what awaits me in the bedroom when we go back.

* * *

Leah pops on by sometimes to visit us, to see how things are going. I must admit I didn't like her at first, but she's grown on me, like a sibling you love to hate. She'll come by once or twice a year and regal us with her wild adventures. She's calmed down in the days since our initial meeting. She's not a drug addict, and she's given up alcohol for the most part, parking her ass in rehab until she came out partially whole. At least the broken shards were holding for now, and I had no doubt they would one day glue themselves together. She didn't need anyone to glue them for her; she was just that strong.

I don't know what broke her in the first place, and it's not my place to know. But when I suggest love might aid in speeding up in curing her, she laughs loud and boisterous in my face. "Bella, you sweet innocent dear," she grins wolf like. "Love can't solve everything. You and Rosalie are a special case. I won't ever get the one I loved- used to love-" she corrects, face lighting up at being able to admit that, "to be my other half. All I'm hoping at this rate is to fuck a lot of bitches until the day I'm ready to settle down."

I overlook her rough terminology, used to her rude tones by now. "And when will that day be?"

"The day I fucking turn eighty."

"That's quite late. And a long way from now."

Leah tsked and wagged her finger at me. "You don't get to complain about time, missy, because you and fucken blonde over there took over a decade to get to where you are."

She leans back more on my couch, having made her home there since day one. She always does have a way of claiming things she likes. Or the people she likes. It's nice to see how fiercely protective she can be of me and Rosalie. "Besides, you kind of stole my best friend away from me. I've got to take some time to more over that."

Leah flashes Rosalie a sharp smile and there is a meaning lost there that I think I do not care to know. I've already suffered enough for Rosalie's choice in partners prior to me and I do not wish to hate Leah, so I'm going to pretend that they were only friends.

"Just don't take over a decade like I did," I shoot back at her and she cocks an eyebrow and just grins.

* * *

Edward sends me letters from time to time, detailing his travels. He has journeyed to France, England, and Canada in order to find himself and someone who he can find a home with. I smile widely when I see his love struck words on the page of his latest letter.

He's met someone, a Tanya Denali, up in Alaska.

They've settled down, only dating for the time being. I'm happy for him. I truly am.

Rosalie gets a job as a fashion consultant and even helps runs the community theater here. She's finally putting her degree to good use and I think it brings her more joy than modeling ever did. She may be strict on the kids, only demanding the best of their acting, but they love her because under that tough exterior they can tell she is a fluffy marshmallow.

And when she talks to me of writing her own plays, I encourage her by reading her works over, by helping her brainstorm late into the night over cups of coffee gone cold.

We're building a future together.

When I had wished upon that candle, I had wanted to free. Free from her. But the other half of my wish, is that I wanted her to be free too. And I guess it took us both to be free from the blinds on our eyes to see that we truly could only be free with each other, but only if we didn't hide from the truth anymore.

"How does this story sound?" Rosalie asks, hopeful and glasses perched on the tip of her nose. I lean in and kiss her because she looks cute in them, before I read the paper. I only get to the third scene when I look up at her all knowingly. The characters can have different names, and traits, and some of the events are changed, but it's too glaringly obvious to me.

"This is about us."

"Yes. About how we met and the other things after that. You wrote a book on it, why can't I write a play?" She pouts.

"I didn't say you couldn't. I just find it cute that we both eventually ended up writing about the same thing."

"Yes, well it's such a huge part of our identity, of our relationship. Neither of us can be the same again because of it," she reasons.

"And I wouldn't have it any other way. I'd suffer for a thousand years if it only meant I could be with you in the end," I reached for her waist and plant a kiss to her shoulder as I drag her closer.

"You're such a romantic," she laughs, smacking me playfully.

"Well, I am a poet," I smirk back. "And I had many years to practice while I pinned over you. Now you're stuck listening to all those years of repressed one liners."

"I look forward to it."

* * *

I won't wax poetic anymore. I have no need when all of the muses living in my head are under the spell of love, a love which makes them lazy and hazy with only the sweetest words upon their lip like nectar. All of my inspiration from poetry had come from her, from her looks, from her actions, and from the deep hurt her ignorance over my feelings for her had caused me. But now, there is no hurt to be felt, at least not as deeply as it had been felt before. There are no actions to contemplate, when I know they are reserved for me. And no looks to wistfully sigh over, because I can gaze at them whenever I want, for as long as I want.

She is mine and I am hers, and all is how it was meant to be.

For once the universe hangs in my favor.

I can't write about sadness or longing anymore when all I ever wanted is wrapped around me, breathing in the scent of my skin, tasting my sweat and moans with her tongue, and supporting me from the bottom of her heart in whatever choice I want to make. I want to write about shitting out rainbows and snorting out cupcakes because that is just how ridiculously happy I am right now. Edward's leaving, while it hurt, was for the best. I could never be truly happy with him weighing me and Rosalie down like dead weight, and he could never truly be happy by my negligence, by the crumbs I offered him. As for Rosalie, she too couldn't have been truly happy by the haphazard arraignment we had had. But she never complained about it. Not once.

Still, I am an author, and writing is what I do to put food on the table.

So when I pick up the pen, I stare at the page, intent on writing. But my mind doesn't fill with words, only with images. Images of Rosalie and I going to a wine tasting and feeding each other those little cheese while laughing obscenely at how stupid we looked when we smudged them up against our noses instead. Images of me and her cuddled up on a couch under a blanket, and watching some sappy romance movie, which we quickly reenacted with sloppy kisses and fingers inching at hems of shirts. Images of us running across the grass, laughing, smiling, spraying water from the hose in a day of gardening gone misguided. Dirt smudges, wet tees clinging to torso's, and goofy smiles on our faces as we resolved our impromptu battle with a sordid kiss and love making on the grass, under the blooming trees of my yard.

My hand, so used to writing sadly slanted words, of punctuating periods too harshly with anger, scratching out whole lines of writing too anguished for human consumption, is still for once. No words really come to mind and I am stumped.

Does my poetry book need a conclusion to it's tale? It was after all written and left unfinished, with the narrative character never knowing if their sentiments would be returned.

I scribble out hastily the word **Epilogue.**

Somehow it seems wrong on the page and I don't know why.

My agent has been bugging me for a new book. The last one was a giant success and he wants a sequel to it. But could I even deliver? What would I write out; all my source material has disappeared. I had written that when I was in the deep throes of depression. When I had thought my word ending.

Now, my world was only beginning. It was the start of the rest of my life with Rosalie. A smile spreads on my face at this; I try to bite it back but fail. Yes, a beginning.

For though my struggle to reach Rosalie has finished, a whole new era awaits her and I.

My pen sings in my hand as I write out the word.

**Prologue**

For our tale has only begun.

.

..

...

The words and ideas come easy now.

**A/N: Well, this the end of this anguished tale. It's been quite a journey getting to the end for the girls and they deserve their happy ending.**


End file.
